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THE GREAT ADVENTURE 




CCPR., 191', BY F. A. STOKES CO. 



The Great Adventure 



£)fje Qreat gftiitttture 



BY 

LOUISE POND JEWELL 



NEW YORK 
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



tV? 



<* 



Copyright, JQII, by 
Frederick A. Stokes Company 



All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign 
languages, including the Scandinavian 







September, iqii 



©CLA300198 



jForetoorD 

^Y^E were sitting before the glowing logs 
VL/ of a great open fire, my guest and I, 
enjoying the little week-end visit, while the 
February winds howled without. Sud- 
denly she shivered involuntarily, and said, 
with a half -laugh, 

"Someone is walking oyer my grave!" 
Then she added, in real earnest, "How I 
hate it! How I dread it — the grave, the 
earth, the cold, the aloneness! The 
thought almost drives me wild, sometimes!" 

"But it won't be you" I philosophized 
lamely. 

"Oh, I know all there is to be said," she 
shook me off, "but I can't get away from 
it. The thought always haunts me — that 
[vii] 



fioretoorD 

this warm flesh will be cold and inert, this 
body, palpitating with life and feeling and 
emotion, will be put down, alone, in the 
ground, and the earth heaped upon it! 
'Dust to dust' — I never forget it completely 
for a moment. In church I sit and look at 
the hundreds of faces, glad and sad, proud 
and humble, haughty and sweet, and pity 
them all; for I say in my heart, 'You all 
must die some day, and be buried in the 
ground!' " 

I looked at her in astonishment; that she, 
so gay, so cheery, seemingly so thoughtless, 
should be speaking thus! 

"Do you suppose that many people feel 
as you do?" I asked. "I shouldn't have 
suspected that you had ever given a thought 
to the subject of death. Do others, too, 
carry this dread in secret, do you think?" 

She reached out for a section of the big 
Sunday edition of the staid metropolitan 
newspaper that was lying near. Across 

[viii] 



HoretoorD 

one whole page, in great capitals, these 
words were printed: 

The Haunting Terror of All 

Human Life 

It Is The Dread of Death, Says 

Professor Metchnikoff. 

Shall We Ever 

Escape It? 

"You see," she said, "I am not the only 
one. Probably most people feel the same 
way. How, indeed, can they escape it?" 

As she spoke, appealingly, wistfully, my 
mind flew back to the life of one I knew in 
former days, who did escape it; who not 
only had no fear of death, but who, looking 
forward eagerly at each turning of her life 
to the coming possibilities, with the confi- 
dence of one expecting a precious gift, saw 
in the episode called death the most joyous 
turning of all. 

[ix] 



fiotetoort 

On the assumption that my guest may 
be right — that there are others, perhaps 
many, who are troubled and depressed by 
the fear of what is called the "last great 
enemy" — this slight sketch is given of the 
life of one who never knew that fear, in the 
hope that the story of her gladness may 
make others less sad. 



W 



THE GREAT ADVENTURE 



Cft* ©treat Elfoimtture 



&lje tttiio was ilj* If rart 

And Iiingp of «U «mr Uamitts ano our loo**. 

— Wordsworth 



/SSfHE must have had a vivid personality, 
dx even as a little girl. I remember well 
the dramatic suspense and expectation that 
marked her first entrance upon the stage of 
my acquaintance with her. We had just 
moved to Detroit; and I, in the manner of 
childhood of that day (and for aught I 
know, of this day, too), became informally 
acquainted with the other boys and girls on 
the "block" through joining in the games 
played on sidewalks, and in front door- 
yards. But I noticed that whenever the 
finest plans, the nicest games, the greatest 
"larks," were suggested, they were always 
[i] 



Of>e Great Bfoaenture 

put off with the words, "Oh, we can't do 
that without Carroll!" or, "Wait till Carroll 
comes!" or, "When Carroll comes back we'll 
do — thus and so." I never questioned the 
finality of this decree. I never asked 
"Why?" In the dumb and wondering man- 
ner of childhood, I accepted the ruling as 
undebatable, and joined in the common- 
place round of pursuits considered allowable 
in the absence of this unknown and wonder- 
ful arbiter of childish destinies. 

For a long time I supposed Carroll to be 
a boy; and only by chance I found out that 
she was a girl, and about my own age. 
Then I built fancies around her; she must 
be very pretty, very rich, and very much a 
leader — "bossy," I probably phrased it to 
myself. When, after what seemed an in- 
terminable time of almost suspended ani- 
mation, she finally swooped down gaily 
upon our stolid little band, my castle of cards 
suddenly collapsed. I found her a very 

M 



C55e Gtreat Btofcenture 

ordinary-looking little girl; not pretty at 
all, but with a small, eager face, a thin lit- 
tle figure not over well-dressed, and a man- 
ner of joyous cameraderie that precluded 
any possibility of "bossiness" from the start. 

"Is this Carroll?" I asked myself. 

But though I marveled at first, and 
though I probably never, as a child, ana- 
lyzed the secret of her leadership, I soon 
recognized the fact of it, and felt as abso- 
lutely as did the others that she was the 
heart and soul of all games worth playing, 
of all mischief worth venturing on, of all 
talks that had fun and sparkle in them; in 
short, that without her we were without 
what we would have called "the go." She 
had a quick, glad way and she loved so to 
do everything, that even Isaac Franz, given 
by us the cruel sobriquets of "Fatty," and 
"Dutch," roused himself into some semblance 
of human childhood, and imagined he was 
having a good time when he went wheez- 

[3] 



C56e ©treat Hmoenture 

ing and puffing through the parts she as- 
signed him in our games. 

As I look back upon that far-away time, 
I see in it a prophecy of our later years. 
I do not remember that Carroll was espe- 
cially loved by anyone but me. Like sun- 
shine, she was necessary, she was the very 
spirit of play, we should have been lost 
without her; yet, like many leaders, she 
missed the more personal intimacies and 
friendships that fell to the lot of less gifted 
ones and of those less useful to the many. 
But my own silent admiration for her, and 
to a certain extent, too, understanding of 
her, began even then, and continued until 
— when? Perhaps, in view of her attitude 
towards life and death, I should say they 
continue yet. 



M 



c 



Qty* r* sat tlj* fcljahom, U&ttb of man. 
-t-Tennyson 

II 

nER earliest recollection was of living, 
outside the city limits, in a great, barn- 
like house, set in the midst of several acres 
of uncultivated garden; a house of big, 
scantily furnished rooms and uncanny* si- 
lent corners; a dreary enough place for a 
little girl without brothers or sisters to be 
brought up in. But to Carroll it was al- 
ways a palace ; and she played blithely about 
in the empty rooms, and amongst the tan- 
gle of neglected shrubbery, happily uncon- 
scious of the fact that through the unprac- 
tically of a visionary artist father the big 
ancestral estate had gone to ruin, and, under 
mortgages and mismanagement, was fast 
slipping through his ringers. 

[5] 



<5&e ©treat Eftroentitre 

To Carroll the place was never sad nor 
gloomy nor deserted. For her it was peo- 
pled with "pretend" playmates and friends 
and fairies, and the grounds with elves and 
sprites and nymphs. It was not until she 
was five years old, at the ecstatic time when 
the little sister arrived, that she realized 
that her sum of happiness had not always 
heen complete. Then, for six months, life 
was so wonderful and so splendid that the 
"pretend" friends and conipanions of the 
past sank into oblivion. The tiny new- 
comer, so fair, so sweet and cuddly, with its 
real eyes that opened and shut; its little 
hands that clasped one's finger ; its soft, soft 
hair, that one might touch lightly with the 
forefinger — at the same time raising a com- 
rade's eyes to the mother's face, as if to 
say, "Don't we think she's sweet?" — the 
round, rose-leaf cheek; the dear, limp little 
arms; even the real cry, that desecrated the 
solemn silences of the respectable old house ; 
[6] 



Of>e Gtreat Bxtoenture 

the actual daily possession of all this seemed 
to Carroll an experience almost unbeliev- 
able. Sometimes she got up at night, and 
stealing softly to the crib in her parents' 
room stood on tiptoe so as to reach in over 
the top with caressing hand, and so make 
sure that the miracle was still there. 

For Carroll, though she had not known 
it, had been much alone, and life for her now 
was absolutely transfigured by this experi- 
ence of a real human love and interest. 

Then came an awful day, the memory of 
which was a confused blur of fear and name- 
less dread; of being pushed aside whenever 
she came near the little group that hung 
round the baby sister's cradle ; of being told 
to "run out and play," when she asked one 
after another, 

"Please tell me what is the matter? 
Mayn't I please speak to baby sister?" 

That day had held a long pain of waiting 
about, outside in the shrubbery, in trem- 
[7] 



C56e Gtreat Botienture 

bling fear of she knew not what calamity, 
and then later — Carroll could never tell 
me about what happened during the next 
two days. She saw nothing of the little sis- 
ter ; her mother sat and wept, and her father 
tried in vain to comfort her. One room 
was locked and Carroll was told she must 
not try to go in; and to her oft-reiterated 
question, * 'Where is she — won't you please 
answer just that?" she received only the re- 
sponse, "Hush — she is dead!" which told 
her nothing. 

After these two days had passed, the 
locked door was opened, and many people 
came to the house and silently entered that 
darkened room. Carroll, too, was led 
within by the old family servant, and seated 
near the door. In the middle of the room, 
on the marble-topped center table stood a 
long, narrow little box. The man whom 
Carroll knew well as the gentleman who did 
all the talking in the church she was taken 

M 



C&e Gfeeat Bttoenture 

to, each Sunday, rose beside the little box, 
and read from a book that she knew, from 
his solemn tones, was the Bible; then he 
talked and prayed, and all sang, and almost 
everyone cried. 

Then the people went out, first walking 
past the box in the middle of the room, and 
looking at it. And then old Elsa, who had 
Carroll in charge, asked her if she wanted 
to look, too. Of course she did; and they 
went up to the box, and Carroll stood on 
a little hassock so as to be able to reach up 
far enough, and looked in. 

With a cry of mingled amazement, joy 
and terror — "Why, here's baby sister!" — 
she raised her eyes to the face of the serv- 
ant, then to those of her father and mother ; 
the situation was inexplicable; the little sis- 
ter lay before her, but the friends about her 
wept, and a nameless terror was upon her. 

The events of the rest of the day seemed 
branded upon the child's heart, and she 
[9] 



G&e Gtreat Sfotoemute 

never, even in her later wholesome and joy- 
ous view of all things, could speak of them 
without trembling. No one told her, no 
one thought of explaining; she was a hor- 
rified spectator of the pageant that followed : 
the screwing on of the lid of the box; the 
drive, in darkened carriage, to a remote gar- 
den of white "statues"; the halt; the stand- 
ing, in a keenly cutting snow-storm, before 
a mound of earth and a deep hole in the 
ground ; then, before her agonized sight, the 
lowering of the box into that freshly dug 
hole — the box in which she knew her treas- 
ured little sister lay. Childhood often en- 
dures its tragedies in a silence as profound, 
through ignorance and inarticulateness, as 
is that of mature years through stoicism, 
philosophy, or religion. 

But when the sad little company returned 
home, Carroll's lips were loosed. 

"I want my baby sister! I want her!" 
she wailed. 

[10] 



©fie Gtteat Bmientute 

Then the mother turned for the first time 
to attend the child that was left her. She 
took Carroll in her arms and offered to 
comfort : 

"Baby's soul is with God, Carroll," she 
said, between her own tears, "and if we — " 

"I don't care anything about her soul — " 
interrupted the child, tempestuously. "I 
want to see her!" 

"Oh, hush, hush, Carroll, you mustn't 
talk that way! You ought to be very 
thankful that God is taking care of our 
precious little one's soul for us, and that she 
will not have to go through all the suffer- 
ing and trouble of this life!" 

"Then why are you crying, mother, if you 
are glad? Oh," she sobbed, repudiating ar- 
gument, "I don't want to talk about it! I 
just want her!" 

No one happened to think that the word 
"soul" was a new one to the little girl; chil- 
dren ask a thousand trivial questions, but 
[HI 



C5&e 6(teat Bfotienture 

often ponder in strange silence over the 
difficulties that sometimes a word might 
clear away — and sometimes a philosopher be 
powerless to remove. 



[12] 



A lonrlQ apparition arttt 

do bt a monmti'a ornament. — Wordsworth 

III 

HROM the day of her sister's death, 
Carroll lived in a darkened world. 
The fairies no more danced in the motes and 
sunbeams, the "pretend" playfellows no 
longer beguiled her hours; she walked around 
the garden quite alone, and even the bird- 
notes of the returning spring sounded sad 
and pitiful. As has been the experience of 
many an older person, the blessing that had 
come for awhile into her life had revealed 
a need she had not known existed; and, de- 
parting, had left a void not to be filled by 
occupations and joys that had formerly 
been absolutely satisfying. The little girl 
was very lonely. 

[is] 



Gfce Gfteat BDtjenture 

One day a new interest came into her 
life. As she walked up and down the 
length of the long picket fence at the front 
of the dreary old garden, peeping through 
at the rare passers-by in the outside world, 
a vision of beauty dawned upon her sight. 
A little girl, not much older than herself, 
was mincing along the sidewalk in the di- 
rection of the town. She was a very prim 
little girl, in stiff, starched skirts that stood 
out proudly and rattled as she walked. 
She wore patent-leather slippers with toes 
turned correctly outward, she carried a lit- 
tle purse of great distinction in her hand. 
But more than all this, she was a child of 
charm and elegance. She had a haughty 
little face, with brown, unsmiling eyes, a 
scarlet mouth that seemed to Carroll so 
sweet that she would like to kiss it, and, 
best of all, long auburn curls, reaching 
nearly to her waist. Surmounting this 
wondrous hair was a hat of many ribbon 

[14] 



<5&e Gfteat Botoenture 

bows, and above that a dainty little sun- 
shade, carried at the prettiest conceivable 
angle. Carroll, conscious of her own plain 
little face, her short-cropped hair, her ging- 
ham pinafore, her high black boots with 
"copper" toes, beheld this embodiment of 
grace and beauty with childish rapture, 
tinged with awe. 

Not presuming to address a being so su- 
perior, she contented herself with walking 
along on her own side of the fence, like a 
little sheep, keeping pace with the beautiful 
child without, who vouchsafed to her never 
a glance. All too soon the long stretch of 
fence was passed by the auburn-haired one, 
who went intrepidly on her way, apparently 
unconscious of the almost reverent regard 
which from within the dilapidated garden 
accompanied her progress. Carroll, with 
small face pressed between the unyield- 
ing pickets, followed her with adoring eyes 
as long as she could, then desperately 

[15] 



<5&e Gfreat HDtoentute 

climbed one of the square gate-posts, and 
there, perched at a dangerous height, caught 
another last blissful glimpse of the vanish- 
ing loveliness. 

Then she descended, and for the rest of 
the day she dreamed. It is easier to "pre- 
tend" about a lovely vision of flesh and blood 
than about fairies and elves, that one knows 
all the time do not really exist at all. "My 
little new friend," she called the child with 
curls to herself, made bold, by distance, to 
the delicious point of familiarity. All that 
day they played together in her fancy. 
Sometimes the little stranger was a princess, 
sometimes only a very, very rich heiress; 
but she was always real and human, not a 
fairy-tale personage, though always far 
above Carroll, who even in play would not 
presume to consider herself the equal of so 
much elegance. 

The next day a great thing happened; in 
fact, the very same thing that had happened 
[16] 



C5fie Gfteat Sfotienture 

the day before! Once more the strange 
child walked by, and once more Carroll ac- 
companied her, on her side of the fence, in 
silent, worshipful admiration. Once more, 
at the last, she mounted the gate-post, and 
looked long after the retreating figure, un- 
til it disappeared. 

That day a determination came to her 
that made her catch her breath because of its 
sheer audacity. "If she comes to-morrow 
I will speak to her!" she said to herself. 

But it seemed such a tremendous step to 
take, that secretly she wondered if her cour- 
age would be equal to the deed when the 
crucial moment should arrive. 

The morning came. Carroll perched 
herself on watch an hour before the time — 
and no little girl came! It was a heavy 
disappointment, and the day was a blank. 
But, on the day following, her heart was 
once more set a-flutter by the approach of 
the auburn curls, the furbelowed hat, the 
[17] 



O&e ©treat BDtientute 

fashionable parasol, the pretty face, the stiff 
little skirts, the outward-pointed patent- 
leather toes. 

Primed almost to suffocation with her 
great resolve, Carroll kept pace with the lit- 
tle stranger almost to the end of the fence. 
Then, blushing a furious red, she gathered 
together all her courage, and said shyly, in 
a soft little voice that could Jscarcely be 
heard, for its trembling, P 

"Little girl, what is your name?" 

The wonderful one turned towards her, 
and replied, without an instant's hesitation, 

"Mind your own business!" — instantly 
following up this piece of advice by the 
proffer, as far as it would reach, towards 
the child behind the fence, of a very red, 
narrow little tongue. 

Thus, summarily, ended the great ro- 
mance. It is unnecessary to describe Car- 
roll's emotions. Only those who retain a 
vivid memory of some personal childish 

[18] 



C5&e Gtteat HDtientute 

tragedy can picture the shock of such a 
wounding, the grief, the disillusionment. 
No grown-up sorrow could be keener, while 
it lasted, and all the timid, glorious half- 
dreams of having a "real little friend" fell 
then and there to earth. 



m 



Htfo an uttbotori* jug mfyoBt ran* is faat fontm. 

— Shelley 

IV 

^^T^ WISH I could have someone to 
^*^ play with to keep," she confided, 
not long after this, to a gay young uncle 
who was visiting for a few days at the big, 
gloomy house. "I almost had a very nice 
little girl for a friend — an almost very nice 
little girl, only she stuck out her tongue, 
and mother says it is vulgar to stick out your 
tongue; and I did love my baby sister, and 
she was almost big enough to play with me, 
only she couldn't because her dress was too 
long; but they put her in the ground and 
covered the box all up, and she is there 
now ; and sometimes it rains." 

"But her soul isn't there in the ground," 
comforted the gay young uncle. 

[20] 



C5&e Gtteat Bfotiemute 

Again that word! It seemed that every- 
one must always mock her with this empty, 
meaningless mummery. This time Car- 
roll's rebellion was put into forcible words. 

"Do you know, uncle Asaph," she said, 
very slowly and distinctly, so that he surely 
could not misunderstand her, "I don't care 
a speck about her soul — not a speck ! What 
I care about is, my baby sister is out there 
all alone in the cemet'ry!" 

The young uncle gazed steadily at the 
earnest little face, and wondered what an- 
swer to make. Wisely, he made none at all, 
at the time. The next day he spent the 
morning wandering about the grounds, and 
at noon brought back to the house a small 
tree branch, with a queer brown growth at- 
tached to it. After dinner he gave Carroll 
a long explanation about the cocoon, and 
when he felt sure she understood, passed the 
trophy over into her hands. He did not 
need to extract a promise that she would 

[21] 



©6c ©treat Bfotienture 

keep watch for the transformation. He 
suggested no parallels, drew no moral les- 
son, but waited for Nature's miracle to do 
its own work, in its own way. v 

In the days that followed, Carroll kept 
such vigilant guard over her mysterious 
treasure — running every few minutes from 
her play to see if anything had "happened"; 
observing it the last thing at night, and pat- 
tering down stairs to the room in which it 
was kept when she first sprang out of bed 
in the morning, though the old servant pro- 
tested against her bare-footed trips, and 
prophesied her taking her "death of cold" — - 
that she was actually on the spot when the 
moth finally appeared. Glowing with ex- 
citement, she called Elsa, who alone hap- 
pened to be in the house at the time, to view 
the wonder with her; and together they 
watched, the old woman and the little child, 
equally astonished and delighted. 

"It's good the other worms don't know 
what's going to happen to them, isn't it, 
[22] 



<5&e ©treat Eftitienttite 

Carroll? Else they'd be so impatient for 
flying, it would be hard for 'em to wait," 
philosophized the old woman, as they 
watched, breathless. 

"Oh, I don't think so, Elsa," replied the 
child; "I hope they do know beforehand, 
for then it must be such fun to wait! It 
would make worm-hood so much more nicer, 
if they knew they were going to have air- 
hood afterwards!" 

Elsa shook her head, unconvinced; and 
then they both gave a gasp of tremulous 
wonder and satisfaction, as the winged crea- 
ture, at last sufficiently metamorphosed to 
venture forth, flew gently a short distance 
and waveringly alighted on a veranda rail 
near by. 

Carroll's expression changed; she turned 
deepened eyes to the withered face above 
her. 

"Elsa," she said, in a low, awed voice, "do 
you s'pose that is its soul?" 

[23] 



Attii by tip ttfeimt Bplntbiii 

3ta Dtt Up mag aitntteii.— Wordsworth 



-CVROM this time on she ceased to accom- 
-*-A pany her mother on her weekly trips to 
the little grave, which before had held for 
her a mingled fascination and terror. Upon 
being pressed for the reason for this change 
of inclination, she would only answer: 

"I don't want to put flowers on an empty 
box." 

How literally and materialistically she 
translated her butterfly lesson into what had 
happened to her little sister, she could never 
be quite sure herself when she was older. 
But of one thing it was evident she was ut- 
terly convinced. What she loved was not 
there, under the ground ; and if, to her child- 
ish idea, the physical body itself had taken 

[24] 



G&e 6(reat Bnuentute 

wings and flown away, what matter? Her 
joyous belief in life, continuous, expanding, 
radiant, never again left her. 

With this idea, too, her old resourceful- 
ness and gayety returned. She found pleas- 
ure in every circumstance and detail of life. 
She walked about the large grounds in 
pleasant weather, and around the house on 
rainy days, talking softly to herself, seem- 
ing never lonely nor at a loss for occupation. 
One stormy Sunday her father, seeking her 
in every probable and improbable spot, 
found her at last in a remote room, sitting 
astride a rocking chair, facing its back, 
rocking furiously and talking away to her- 
self, cheerfully unconscious of an encroach- 
ing presence. 

"What in the world are you doing, Car- 
roll?" he asked, in some disapprobation. 

"Oh, having fun," was her instant and 
hearty rejoinder. 

In fact, "having fun" seemed the key- 

[25] 



Gfie Great Efotoentute 

note of her life. The little tasks which 
were given her now, gradually, to perform, 
were transformed through the alchemy of 
her happy spirit into games, and her play- 
times never lost their zest. 



[26] 



3Jrl| katm uirtjt attium— Luther 

VI 

pT SEVERE test of Carroll's new-found 
3— I. philosophy came two years after the 
loss of her little sister. Her mother, always 
an invalid, died while on a trip to the south 
in search of health. As to what the child's 
thoughts were, and how she bore this new 
bereavement, she gave no sign. This was 
partly due, doubtless, to the fact that her 
aunt, her father's maiden sister, who was 
her guardian and only companion at this 
time, was a devoted adherent of conven- 
tional Calvinism; and, far from encourag- 
ing confidences from her small niece, would 
not have conceded any right, on the part of 
one so young, of having individual ideas or 
even feelings on such an occasion except the 
[27] 



C5f>e ©(teat BDtientute 

scrupulously orthodox ones of filial grief 
and pious resignation. 

It was to this disciple of ritualism that 
the future well-being of the little girl was 
consigned, on the return of her father from 
the south; for Miss Sophia Page, being free 
from other ties, then took up her post per- 
manently as house-keeper and home-maker 
in her brother's family. At the same time, 
an oddly advantageous offer of purchase 
being made for the ramshackle old house and 
its dejected acres, a removal to the city was 
decided upon, and Carroll's life was set to 
new music. 

Her mother had been one of those women 
who live for their husbands only, and to 
whom their children are a very secondary 
consideration; so that, in spite of the con- 
trast between her gentle personality and the 
more silent and austere one of her sister-in- 
law, there could not have been for little Car- 
roll the heart-breaking sense of mother-loss 

[28] 



B&e Great Efotientute 

that comes to some children at such a time. 
And though she had been happy in the 
great, empty place in the country, she soon 
became happier still in the small, plain quar- 
ters in the city street ; for here, for the first 
time, she found herself in the midst of a 
life teeming with human interest, and de- 
lightedly acquiring new playmates and 
friends. 

There were trials, of course; what child's 
life does not abound in them? One of these, 
upon her entering the public school, lay in 
the rather erratic name her parents had 
given her, with never a thought, parent- 
wise, of the childish embarrassments which 
are the school-world penalty for anything 
that smacks of the unusual. 

"Carroll — " repeated the teacher; "how 
do you spell it— 'C-a-r-o-1'?" 

The child spelt the name correctly. 

"You must be mistaken," was the teach- 
er's verdict. " 'Carroll' is a boy's name. 
[29] 



C5&e Qteat Bfotoenture 

Your name is probably Caroline, and they 
call you 'Carol,' for short." 

''No, ma'am, it isn't," persisted the little 
girl, stoutly, but blushing painfully at being 
thus made conspicuous before the whole 
class. "I know my name is 'Carroll.' " 

"You may take a demerit for contradict- 
ing your teacher, and you may go home at 
once and get your mother to write your name 
on a card for me." 

"I can't," said Carroll, scarcely above a 
whisper. 

" You can't ! Well, I'd like to know why 
not, when I tell you to!" 

"Because she can't — not now." 

"She can't! You don't mean to tell me 
your mother can't write, do you?" Scath- 
ing tones indicated the teacher's profound 
disgust for any luckless child that would 
have to answer such a question in the af- 
firmative. 

Carroll looked interested and perplexed; 

[30] 



C56e Gxm Btnientute 

for a moment she forgot the forty pairs of 
eyes that had been making her inquisition so 
painful. 

"I don't know whether they can write or 
not," she said, thoughtfully. "Butterflies 
can't; but then the worm couldn't, either." 

"I wonder if you are a half-wit! You 
may take your seat, and stay after school!" 
cried the exasperated teacher. 

Hot with embarrassment again, Carroll 
obeyed her. The facts as to her name, and 
the misunderstanding about her mother 
were cleared up satisfactorily; but it was 
an unfortunate and trying entrance upon 
school lif e. For weeks the little girl had to 
endure the appellations "half-wit," and 
"Mister Carroll" — trials the depth of which 
a grown-up can scarcely imagine — and only 
her own sunny nature and merry disposition 
kept them from becoming permanently 
fixed. 

School life, in fact, throughout its whole 

[31] 



G&e Gtreat HDtoentute 

course, was anything but a primrose path 
to Carroll, and most of her troubles came 
from her ignorance of the gentle art of dis- 
sembling. The principal of the school was 
fond of coming into the class-room, and 
propounding some problem for the children 
to work out "in their heads," then, in the 
absence of any response from them — for his 
questions were invariably beyond their depth 
— he would give the solution and the correct 
answer himself, with the stereotyped query, 
as he turned to go: "Is there anyone who 
does not understand?" Forty frightened 
little pieces of humanity would maintain a 
relieved and intelligent-looking silence, only 
too glad to be let off from questioning ; but, 
regularly, up would go Carroll Page's hand, 
though her face, flushed with shame and 
self-condemnation, showed anything but 
bravado. 

This came to be such an invariable occur- 
rence that the principal inquired privately 

[32] 



<3&e Gtreat BDtientute 

into Carroll's class record, and was almost 
incredulous when he found that she ranked 
among the highest. 

"She must be extremely slow — abnormally 
so, then," he concluded. "She is the only 
one who never understands my explana- 
tions." 

The teacher finally went to the length of 
suggesting to the delinquent the propriety 
of preserving a politic silence at these times. 

"Your raising your hand annoys Mr. 
Smythe," she explained. But the little 
girl's answer showed her the futility of pre- 
senting the argument of expediency to a 
nature so downright and uncompromising. 

"Why, I'll try to understand, Miss Win- 
ter; I'll try hard; but if I can't, I just s'pose 
I can't; and then of course I'll have to say 
so, when he asks, even if it kills me — and 
Mr. Smythe, too— won't I?" 



[33] 



By ttytit tonrka.— St. James 

VII 

ON Carroll's vigorous conviction of the 
unalterableness of truth was doubtless 
reflected something of her aunt's Puritan 
training. But she showed, over and over 
again, even in those early days, that, what- 
ever the principles that governed her, she 
adopted them only when they met the ap- 
proval of her own reason. 

A conversation illustrative of this oc- 
curred one day when Carroll was sitting in 
her little rocking chair by her aunt's side, 
sewing on her daily half -hour "stint," down 
the middle of a sheet; an "over-and-over" 
piece of work, showing stitches of varying 
sizes, and marked here and there by little 
rusty-looking blood-stains that blazed the 
painful trail to housewifely perfection. 

"Aunt Sophy," said Carroll, suddenly, 

[34] 



G&e ©treat HDtiemure 

without preface or warning, as she rocked 
back and forth in her matter-of-fact little 
way, "did you know I'm an unbeliever?" 

Aunt Sophy jumped. 

"What did you say?" she asked, nerv- 
ously. Her niece often made speeches call- 
ing for a mental alertness in which the aunt 
felt herself lacking. 

"Did you know I'm an atheist?" repeated 
Carroll, calmly, biting off her thread and 
making a knot and speaking in the casual 
manner of one who might have asked, "Did 
you know the Sanborns had soup for din- 
ner?" 

"What do you mean, child?" asked her 
aunt. "Why do you think you're an — 
atheist?" She hesitated over the word; it 
was too nearly a "scriptural" word to be 
spoken lightly. 

"Because I don't believe in Hell and the 
Devil," replied the little girl, cheerfully, as 
if that ended the matter. 

[35] 



CDlje ©[teat Btrtnemure 

Miss Page was aghast; more, it must be 
admitted, by the avowal of disbelief in the 
orthodox place of torment and its perma- 
nent resident, than by the astounding con- 
clusion the child drew from this disbelief, 
and its implied commentary on what she 
had been taught. 

"Hadn't you better talk with the minister 
about it?" she asked, helplessly, after a mo- 
ment's pause. 

"No," was the sober response, while Car- 
roll still rocked and sewed; "he seems so 
happy the way he is that I think it would be 
a pity to 'sturb him." 

Aunt Sophy fell silent, from pure ina- 
bility to cope with the situation. But she 
talked with her brother about the matter, 
later in the day, and begged him to reason 
with the child, and try to get her out of so 
dreadful a state of sin. Fortunately, Car- 
roll's father approached the question from a 
different angle. 

[36] 



<5&e Gtteat Bfotoenture 

"Carroll," he said to his little daughter, 
gravely, after supper that evening, "a man 
who does not believe in Hell and the Devil 
is not called an atheist." 

"Isn't he? What is he called?" asked 
Carroll, simply. 

Her father, puzzled, hesitated; any an- 
swer he might make seemed open to the 
child's objections. He compromised: 

"An atheist is a man who does not believe 
in God." 

Carroll's eyes grew wide with dissent. 

"Why, father, I've heard you call Mr. 
Warden an atheist, and I know he believes 
in God!" 

"What makes you think that?" 

Mr. Warden was one whom Carroll's 
father would have called a "moral man." 

"Why, because he is so nice," said the lit- 
tle girl, confidently. "When those rowdy 
boys over on the Avenue were just 'busing 
that little yellow lost dog that you called a 
[»7] 



C5&e Gtteat Hotientute 

cur — you remember that little dog, don't 
you, father? You wouldn't let me keep 
him? — Mr. Warden drove them off, just as 
stern, and was so gentle to the little cur ; and 
he had the Cruelty Society come and get 
that poor old lame cat with one eye that was 
so mis'able; and he always unchecks his 
horse when he goes in a store ; I've seen him ; 
and—" 

"But what has all that to do with his be- 
lieving in God?" interrupted her father, a 
trifle impatiently, seeing no end in prospect 
to the narrative so earnestly recited. 

"Why — why — why — " began Carroll, 
puzzled in turn. "Of course he believes in 
God if he — why, don't you see it, father?" 

She looked up into his face anxiously, sure 
her idea was right, yet finding it hard to 
reduce to argument. He gave her no help ; 
probably he was incapable of it, for his mind 
had seldom wandered out of the safe fold 
of creed and dogma; and the matter was 
dropped. 

[38] 



©If Iff* ttttl* mart, nnh Jjow murlj it t0 1 
An& % Itltlr lr0s, mt& mtjat ttrorlfcii tttmtg! 
— Browniko 

VIII 

XT was in this same year, when Carroll 
was nine, that she made her wonderful, 
and to her, original, discovery about love. 

She came to her aunt one day with her 
eyes deep and glowing. 

"Why, Aunt Sophy," she exclaimed, "if 
everybody loved each other there wouldn't 
have to be any prisons, would there?" 

"Oh, yes," argued her aunt, whose mental 
processes were slow, "it would be necessary 
to punish the offenders even if we loved 
them — as I punish you when you do wrong, 
for your own good." 

"But if they loved each other those per- 
sons wouldn't have done wrong!" urged the 
little girl. "You see, they would have loved 
the other people, and wouldn't have stolen 
[891 



G&e ©treat Bttoenture 

anything or killed anybody. And there 
wouldn't have to be any policemen," she 
went on, following up the subject, "because 
nobody would do anything to be arrested 
for ; and there wouldn't have to be any laws, 
because every one would be nice to every one 
else, without laws; and there wouldn't be 
any hungry people, because the rich people 
would love them so much they'd have them 
at their houses ; and they wouldn't be cold in 
winter — why, they wouldn't be poor at all, 
because everybody would go halves. What 
a little, little thing would make all the dif- 
ference, wouldn't it, Aunt Sophy — just to 
love everybody! Wouldn't it be fun?" 

It was a new thought to Miss Page. It 
is an old thought to most of us. Since then 
many books have been written on the sub- 
ject, and an eminent Scotchman has called 
it the "greatest thing in the world." But 
to Carroll, at nine years, the beautiful ideal 
came as one out of a clear sky. 

[40] 



IX 

ONE of Carroll's "naughty ways" that 
her Aunt Sophia could never quite for- 
give, even when she had been reluctantly 
won over to regard leniently much that to 
her was inexplicable if not irreligious, was 
her manner of conducting herself during the 
formal "pastoral calls" that were made, 
three or four times a year, by the punctil- 
ious, old-school minister. 

These calls were all very much alike, hav- 
ing an order of procedure as unvarying as 
that of the public worship in church on the 
first day of the week. The minister would 
be escorted into the seldom-used and chilly 
"front parlor," chilly at all seasons of the 
year, by reason of its air of speechless indig- 
nation at the liberty being taken in using it 

[41] 



<3&e Gtreat HDtienture 

at all. He would be carefully seated in the 
one rocking chair which the room boasted; 
and then, with his hostess opposite him and 
the rest of the family — if family there were 
— in respectful and attentive attitudes near 
by, there would be introduced topics of semi- 
religious conversation, such as the numbers 
"out" at church, on recent Sunday evenings, 
the amount of collections "taken up," the 
dates and importance of various missionary 
or other religious meetings to be held in the 
near future, the success or inadequacy of the 
efforts of the "Ladies' Society," and kindred 
subjects of impersonal nature and languid 
interest. At a certain proper point in the in- 
terview the minister, clearing his throat, 
would say, after an appropriate and sugges- 
tive pause, "Let us pray!" and all present 
would kneel by their chairs. After a prayer 
similar in character to the one which Carroll 
called "the flfteener," on Sunday (having 
repeatedly and accurately timed it by peep- 

[42] 



C5&e Gtteat Efttoenture 

ing through her fingers at the big clock at the 
back of the church) , they would rise, a little 
general sigh and a pushing back of chairs 
would indicate that this duty was fulfilled 
and that the ordinary routine of life would 
now proceed, the minister would shake 
hands with every one, and take his depart- 
ure. 

Carroll had, almost from infancy, shown 
a preference for conversation with men, pos- 
sibly because she found greater freedom 
with them for expressing her ideas; they 
were not quite as sure to turn aside her ques- 
tions as foolish and her opinions as "unlady- 
like," as were the women who belonged to 
her circle of acquaintance. So, whenever 
the minister called, she took great pains to 
be present, and always managed to "get into 
the conversation," as she expressed it, by 
asking questions, and often by introducing 
the discussion of such trivial matters as made 
her aunt turn cold with horror. But, in- 

[43] 



Gfte Gtreat Btwentute 

stinctively perceiving the approach of the 
moment for the prayer, Carroll invariably 
had some reason for leaving the room just 
in time to escape the premonitory pause and 
the invocation; though, just as invariably 
she was found at the gate, on the pastor's 
departure, smilingly ready with a cordial 
little hand in farewell. 

After one of these occasions Miss Page 
ventured to overstep the embarrassed reti- 
cence in such matters that was a part of her 
nature, and asked Carroll tactfully if she 
had noticed that it always happened that she 
left the room before the minister's prayer. 

"Oh, it doesn't happen" replied Carroll, 
without hesitation. "I go on purpose." 

"Why do you do such a thing as that, 
child?" 

"Oh, I don't know; I hate it — and I bet 
God hates it, too !" 

"Why, Carroll Page, what a dreadful 
thing to say ! The idea of God's hating the 

[44] 



(5&e Great Bbbenttire 

minister's prayers! What makes you say 
that?" 

Carroll looked puzzled, as she often did 
when asked to give her entirely unformu- 
lated reasons. It seemed to her that grown 
people had a peculiar propensity for de- 
manding explanations of some of the sim- 
plest and most obvious things. Her answer 
this time came slowly and with hesitation. 

"Oh, I can't say, really, Aunt Sophy; but 
I should think that God was too busy to pay 
real good 'tention to all those call-prayers, 
every day. They're so much alike, that I 
shouldn't think they'd be very interesting to 
Him, yet I s'pose He is too polite not to 
listen — so I'll bet He hates it." 

Her vague feeling about this whole mat- 
ter was something which, young though she 
was, she felt it impossible to put into words ; 
and even in later life, when she was so frank 
and ready to speak about almost all deep 
things of experience, she maintained a pe- 

[45] 



CD&s 6toat BDtientute 

culiar silence on the subject of prayer. It 
was only by some word or expression 
dropped by chance now and then that I came 
to understand her feeling that prayer, com- 
munion between one's most real and inmost 
self and the great universal Source and 
Father, could seldom be voiced at all in the 
presence of others, and never as a set and 
formal functioning. 



[46] 



" 2% rnuntlwfi goli of a ntrrra ^rart." 

X 

XN" those first days of our acquaintance 
in Detroit, her undaunted spirit of 
cheerfulness was a constantly recurring sur- 
prise to me. There was never such a girl as 
she for "having fun," and she entered into 
all our play with such heart and soul that, as 
I have said, nothing seemed to go on well 
without her. Yet her love of "good times" 
never seemed to make her even childishly 
intolerant of the little duties that were in- 
creasingly laid upon her as time went on. 

I remember going one afternoon, in great 
excitement, to get her to come and try some 
new roller-skates that Eunice Sanborn had 
just acquired, and that each one of us on 
"our block" was trying, in turn, with timor- 
ous delight. I found Carroll busy in the 
[47] 



G&e Great Efotienture 

wood-shed, piling up, stick by stick, against 
a long wall, two cords of stove wood to be 
used for the kitchen fire during the winter. 
My friend heard the news of the wonderful 
skates with the most satisfying enthusiasm, 
and then went on methodically with her 
work. 

"Isn't that splendid!" she said. "Won't 
it be too much fun for anything to use them ! 
I guess I'll be ready by to-morrow, and then 
won't you die of laughing to see me fall all 
over the sidewalk and gutter, after you've 
all learned how!" And she laughed gaily 
herself, and returned to her piling. 

"Oh, can't you come a little while to-day?" 
I cried, in disappointment. 

"Nope," was the uncompromising but 
cheerful answer. "I've got to finish this 
first." 

"Don't you suppose your aunt would let 
you off a little while, just this once?" I 
pleaded. "You could do the rest of it to- 
morrow. Why don't you ask her?" 

[48] 



C5&e Gtreat Efttoentute 

"Oh, it isn't Aunt Sophy; she wouldn't 
care when I do it. But it's got to be done 
sometime, and — it's so much more fun to 
think of play when you're working, than to 
think of work when you're playing!" 

"Well, I think it's mean and hateful," 
was my view of the situation. "Aren't you 
mad that you've got to do the old work at 
all, Carroll?" 

"Why, no," she replied, standing up and 
regarding me with her "thoughtful" look. 
"I won't mind it a particle, really, Theo- 
dora, now that you have told me about the 
skates." 

"But doesn't your back ache, stooping 
down, and standing up all the time?" I 
asked, transferring my attention to the de- 
tails of the work. 

It was a kind of labor to which I was not 
accustomed. In my family there were men 
and boys to do such "chores." 

Carroll straightened herself and stretched 
her arms. 

[49] 



G&e Gtreat HDtienture 

"A little," she admitted, "if you weren't 
too busy doing it to think about it!" 

"I hate work, anyhow!" I exclaimed, 
starting to go, and possibly relieving my 
twinges of conscience for not stopping to 
help my friend with this statement of indi- 
vidual eccentricity. 

"I don't," said Carroll; "at least, not 
much ; at least, I may hate the working part 
of work, but when there's fun to think 
about, you don't have any time to spare 
for hating. Of course," she added, anxious 
to agree with me as far as she could, "it 
would be horrid if it weren't for that!" 



[50] 




©tine • , . «. in wfrjrif tfje mmUt 
Anil all Ijf r train msrt Ijurl'h. 

— Henry Vaughan 

XI 

CERTAIN day, in that same first 
year of our acquaintance, was one 
of those dates periodically designated by 
various religious sects as the time appointed 
for the "end of the world." 

We children heard our parents talking 
about it, most of them with outward skep- 
ticism, but, to the finely attuned ear of child- 
hood, with a concealed note of awe and un- 
acknowledged half -dread. We all made 
light of the matter when we discussed it on 
our corner, early in the afternoon; but, as 
sunset approached, the sky took on a 
strange, lurid appearance, ominous murky 
clouds were rolled up from the east; and 

[51] 



C56e ©teat Efttoenttite 

the sun, a great crimson globe of fire, behind 
a screen of vapor, seemed to hold within it- 
self a fearful menace of impending doom 
and desolation. 

People came running out of their houses 
to look, and our corner became the gather- 
ing place for the families who lived near by 
on the adjoining block. I remember still 
the vague alarm in most of the faces; and 
even the fathers, those usual strongholds of 
confidence and comfort, gazed not without 
uneasiness at the portent. I felt a gentle 
nudge at my elbow, and found Carroll Page, 
tip-toeing up to look, at my side. 

"Isn't it awful?" said I. 

"Isn't it fun?" said Carroll. 

"Aren't you scared?" I whispered. 
"What if it is going to be the end of the 
world!" 

"Oh, I hope it is!" she exclaimed, jubi- 
lantly. "Wouldn't it be just too splendid, 
if God had put off the end of the world all 

[52] 



<5&e Gfceat Eftftenture 

this time, and then had it exactly when you 
and I happened to be here?" 

I gaped at her, speechless. 

"It would be so much nicer than dying the 
usual way," explained Carroll — "to be 
snatched up into those clouds. Just think, 
maybe in ten minutes we will be! I can 
hardly realize it, can you?" 

"I thought you loved to live, and had such 
good times," I objected, reproachfully. 

"Why, I do. That's why I'd like this. 
'Most everything is interesting, but this 
would be so dreadfully interesting!" 

I drew away from her and went and stood 
by my father. At that weird hour it seemed 
more natural and normal to be awe-struck 
and afraid, than cheerful and exulting. 
The end of the world did not come, and I 
believe only one person in the city of Detroit 
went disappointed to bed that night. 



[53] 



Mi\a atj«ta tjis Ijatth Fyatb last Iff* golh. 
— George Herbert 

XII 

CARROLL'S attitude towards religious 
matters was so entirely different from 
her aunt's that she escaped much of the ar- 
gument and admonition that that conscien- 
tious and good woman would have felt she 
must bestow if she had not been at every at- 
tempt baffled and mystified by a point of 
view at once so startling and yet so serious 
that she found her stock of phrases inappli- 
cable to the real situation. On the occasion 
when, after long inner debate and prayer, 
the aunt approached the niece on the subject 
which she felt her now at a fitting age to take 
up, properly consider, and duly act upon, 
namely, "conversion and joining the church," 
she was rendered speechless at the outset of 

[54] 



C5&e 6(reat Efotienture 

their conversation, not by a "hardened state 
of sin," which she would have had plenty of 
arguments to cope with, but by an attitude 
of mind wholly novel and unprepared for, 

"Carroll," she had said, very seriously, 
"have you ever talked to the minister about 
the state of your soul?" 

"No, Aunt Sophy." 

"Don't you think it's about time for you 
to be interested in it?" 

"Why, I don't know as I do, dear. Don't 
you think it is terribly selfish to be so inter- 
ested in one's own soul?" 

Selfish! Miss Page, trying to think of 
an appropriately severe rejoinder, became 
involved in her own thoughts, and the golden 
moment slipped by. 



[55] 



3% Iftuvt Ijaiij rawma tljat r*amm fcotlf nnt burnt. 

— Pascal 

XIII 

y?^Y own first talk with Carroll on the sub- 
^-*4! ject of death, or rather, of life — for the 
idea of death was one that her mind seemed 
to glance off from, take no cognizance of — 
was when Curly, the small brown water- 
spaniel that was the joy of "our block," was 
killed by a passing street-car. Carroll and 
I saw the cruel accident, and she it was who 
ran and picked the limp little creature up in 
her arms. Sitting on the curb at the side of 
the street, she held him while he gasped his 
poor little life away, raising tragic and lov- 
ing eyes to hers the while, and showing his 
gratitude, even in those last moments, by 
trying to lick her tender, pitying hand. But 
when the final breath was drawn, and I was 
[56] 



©be ©treat JEfotoentute 

wringing my hands in sorrow and distress, 
Carroll laid him gently down, and rising, 
looked about. 

"Now we must tell a policeman, and he'll 
know what to do," she said, quietly. 

"Oh, Carroll, sha'n't we bury him?" I 
urged, as usual ready to defer to her, but 
not without protest. 

"That isn't him" she answered with un- 
grammatical force, turning half about to 
give a glance at the little heap; "not any 
more than this curbstone is. Why should 
we want to carry it home with us, and feel 
sorry and sad about it, and cry as we buried 
it in the ground, any more than we'd do it 
to the curbstone?" 

"But even you think it is the house he 
lived in, don't you? I'd like your house, 
Carroll, and would love to stay near it as 
long as I could, even after you'd moved out, 
just because you'd lived there. It would 
make me think of you." 
[57] 



<3&e Gtreat HDtientute 

Carroll dug her heel into the turf and 
swung back and forth on it before answer- 
ing. It always took her some time to think. 

c 'But if I had moved out because the 
house was on fire, and when I was gone you 
found everything all burnt and blackened 
and charred and the rafters ready to fall, I 
guess it wouldn't make you think of me, 
would it? I'd consider you pretty foolish 
if you preferred to stay at that falling house 
instead of looking down the street after me, 
and perhaps seeing me wave my hand to you 
as I turned the next corner." 

"But — to me that isn't just his house; it's 
Curly," I persisted. 

"Why? Don't you see that already it 
doesn't look like him? Even the hair looks 
different, somehow, and those aren't his dear 
eyes! I don't know what to call that, but 
Curly himself, with his glossy, curly hair, 
and his wagging stump of a tail, and his 
bright brown eyes all full of fun, — he's up 

[58] 



<5&e Gtreat Bfotoenture 

here, somewhere. I wish I could see him!" 
And she raised her head, and looked up, 
blinking, to a place just above the level of 
our heads, readjusting the focus of her eyes, 
as if trying by sheer force of will to pene- 
trate a baffling veil that hid something real 
and actual from her sight. 

I followed her example, as usual, and 
looked too, but saw nothing but the motes 
in the sunbeams, and empty air. 

"What makes you think so, Carroll? 
[Why do you say Curly isn't there?" I 
pointed behind me, but did not look down. 
I did not believe Carroll, of course, but 
there was something very assuring in her 
confidence. 

"I don't know," was the rather disap- 
pointing answer. 

"Is it because the Bible says so?" I urged, 
really eager to be convinced. 

"Oh, no; how could the people in the 
Bible know any more about it than we do?" 
[59] 



©&e Gfreat gfotoenture 

"Carroll! The people in the Bible!" I 
reproved. "Of course they knew things 
that we don't." 

"Well, do you believe it, then, because the 
Bible says so?" She turned the war into 
my camp. 

"Why — why, yes — I believe it, of course." 
I was eleven, and a member of the church, 
and "believed" many things I had never 
thought about. 

"But," I added, honestly, after an in- 
stant's thought, "someway I don't believe it 
the way you do. I believe it like — like re- 
ligious things, and you believe it like every- 
day things. Please tell me why you do, 
Carroll." 

I remember, after all these years, just 
how she looked at me, there in the city street, 
the little brown heap lying beside us— the 
earnest, puzzled, thinking look, as if she 
were trying hard to find the answer. 

"1 — I truly can't tell you how I know, 
[60] 



C5&e Gtteat BDtientute 

Theodora," she said at last. "I just know. 
I know it all through me!" 

And with that answer I had to be con- 
tent. 



[61] 



(Com* a Itttir rlouhle t 'tnrixt must Iupb an& IjMttrn. 

— BlJLWER LYTTON 

XIV 

XAM constantly tempted to digress and 
mention other incidents of that far- 
away childhood not directly relevant to this 
development of Carroll's character and be- 
liefs. Indeed, her belief about life was so 
woven into her entire nature, was such an 
everyday and genuine part of her, that it 
sometimes seems as if almost every recollec- 
tion of her is irradiated with that spirit of 
vividness and enjoyment. But that her en- 
joyment demanded a free right of way, 
brooking no obstacles in the form of a 
troubled conscience or a sense of wrong- 
doing, we learned when we gave her her 
"surprise party." 

We had arranged it with great secrecy 
and excitement, had gained Miss Page's 
[62] 



<5&e Gtreat HDtoenture 

consent, sending a scared little delegation 
to her beforehand, and at four o'clock, one 
spring afternoon, knocked loudly upon the 
forbidding door with the old-fashioned, big 
brass knocker, shaped like a dragon's head, 
which held guard over the sacred "hall and 
front parlor" part of the house. Carroll 
duly appeared in answer to our somewhat 
abashed knocking, and all in unison we cried, 
"Surprise! Surprise!" waving our little 
boxes and packages containing the various 
elements of the supper we had assigned to 
each to bring. 

But Carroll's reception, which, being Car- 
roll's, we had expected to be much more 
glowing and appreciative than the usual one 
of the "surprised" child, was a disappoint- 
ment. Instead of ecstatically inviting us 
into the house, she came out on the little 
front "stoop," partly closing the door be- 
hind her. 

"Oh, I'm so glad you have come to play," 
[63] 



C3&e ©[teat Bsfcemure 

she said, politely, "but let's play out in the 
yard; wouldn't you rather?" 

That, however, was not at all our pro- 
gramme. Our boxes must be handed to 
Miss Page, our "things" must be duly placed 
on the spare-room bed, and we had come, 
not for the every-day, out-of-door sports, 
but for "Clap-in-clap-out," "Pillow and 
key," "Black magic," "Post-Office," and 
like elevating and instructive in-door games. 
So we pushed past her into the house, and 
Carroll reluctantly followed. 

"She isn't glad to see us!" someone said, 
disappointedly, almost resentfully ; and that 
voiced the feeling of all of us. 

We invaded the sitting-room, and method- 
ically began our strenuous games. Car- 
roll took part, but without her usual whole- 
souled enjoyment. There was a shadow on 
her face, almost a worried look. She 
seemed, very unlike Carroll, to be trying to 
have a good time ! 

[64] 



C5&e Gtreat Efctienture 

During one of the games of greatest hi- 
larity, I saw her slip out of the room, and 
quietly followed her, in the hope of finding 
out the cause — for I felt sure there must 
be one — of her strange behavior. I reached 
the kitchen door just in time to hear her 
saying: 

"I don't know what to do, Aunt Sophy! 
They would come in, though I invited them 
not to, and I can't bear to tell them to go 
away, I thought they knew you never al- 
lowed me to have company without your 
permission." 

"Oh, it's all right," Miss Page answered. 
"I realized that it would be a lot of trouble, 
but they said you were the only one that 
had never had a party, and this seemed as 
easy a way of giving one as any." 

"Oh!" came Carroll's voice, quite changed, 
and with its usual ring. "Then you knew 
they were coming, Aunt Sophy! You said 
they might?" 

165} 



<5&e Great BtrtJenture 

"Why, of course, child! What do you 
suppose I had you put on your best dress 
for, if not for this?" 

"Oh, Aunt Sophy ! How perfectly lovely ! 
How darling of you to let me have a 
party!" And Carroll, wheeling round, her 
face aglow, encountered me at the door, 
eavesdropping, and waltzed me breathlessly 
around the room to work off her pent-up 
anxiety and the joyous reaction from it. 

After that there was nothing to complain 
of in Carroll's conduct. Everything went 
with a swing and a dash, and we had what 
we had expected to have at Carroll's house, 
"just the best old time," as one of the girls 
said, on the way home. 



[66] 



^l}OBf> obstinate ntxtBtioninaji 

©f Btnst, mb ontnxaro t^inga 

— Wordsworth 

XV 

ONE day in summer, Carroll and I had 
walked beyond the city limits to "the 
woods," which was a favorite place with us. 
We were lying on the ground, looking up 
through the green branches to the sky, which 
always looks its most wonderful blue when 
seen in just that way, when my friend said, 
after a long silence, and apparently a propos 
of nothing, that she hoped when she grew 
up she should get married and have some 
children, — "quite a lot of them." 

"Why?" I asked. 

My own aspirations were more exclusive. 

"Because," she said dreamily, "I know 
how they'd feel, and I'd feel with them." 
[67] 



C5&e Gtreat Btotienture 

"What do you mean, Carroll Page?" To 
me there seemed to be no use in talking so 
vaguely. 

"Well, this blue sky reminds me of one 
time when I was a little girl" — she was now 
twelve or thirteen ! — "and had a balloon, one 
of those red balloons, you know, attached to 
a string, that one gets at a circus. I never 
went to a circus, but my best uncle brought 
me this balloon and I just loved it. I used 
to take it out in the big yard we had then, 
and run up and down, holding to the end 
of the string, and playing it was the sail and 
I was the boat, or playing it was the rain- 
bow and I was running after the pot of 
gold, or that it was a guiding fairy — lovely 
games I played with it," said Carroll, smil- 
ing reminiscently and forgetting the pres- 
ent. 

"And what happened?" I prompted. 

"Well, one day the string broke and the 
balloon went up, up, up, in the air. I 
[68] 



Cfie ©treat Etotoenture 

watched it, tipping my head 'way back, and 
it went up higher and higher, and got 
smaller and smaller, and then I couldn't see 
it at all. I was dreadfully sorry to lose it 
and felt almost like crying, for I guess I 
didn't have so very many bought things to 
play with; and then I thought of something 
so nice that I forgot to feel bad." Once 
more she seemed to forget her listener, and 
I became impatient. 

"What has all that to do with your hop- 
ing you'll have a lot of children, Carroll? 
I'm sure I don't see !" 

"Why, it all belongs together," she as- 
sured me. "It was a day like this, and I 
remember just how blue the sky was where 
the little speck disappeared. So I went 
into the house to tell my mother my nice 
thought, and I said, 'Mother, my balloon 
broke and went up into the sky, and do you 
s'pose God has got it by this time, and is 
glad to have it up there for baby sister and 
[69] 



Gfie Gtreat Bttoenture 

the other little children angels to play with?' 
I was all excited about it, you know, for 
you see it was a very comforting thought, 
I had loved the balloon so. And my mother 
said, 'Why, Carroll Page, what a naughty, 
irreverent thing to say! You mustn't ever 
say such a thing again in your life!' She 
didn't tell me why, and I didn't understand, 
and everything suddenly felt all kind of 
dark and heavy — like indigestion, you 
know. I'd lost my balloon, and it was 
wrong to think God had liked it, — and 
somehow there wasn't anything to be glad 
about." 

"You do 'most always manage to be glad 
about something, don't you?" I interpolated, 
with unwonted perception. 

"Well," Carroll laughed, "I was very lit- 
tle then, and of course I believed my mother 
must be right. But I think now, that if I 
was someone's mother and she came to me 
and said what I said to my mother that time, 
[70] " 






<5&e ©treat Efotienture 

I'd know that she didn't feel naughty and 
irreverent, but just the most reverent; and 
I'd say, 'Yes, indeed, God loves the balloon, 
and will be so pleased to have it, and will 
keep it for you, after the angel children 
have played with it a little, so that you can 
have it again sometime.' " 

"The idea! That's a fairy tale, Carroll. 
'Keep it for you!' You'll grow up before 
you die and go to heaven, and what will you 
want of a balloon then?" asked I, Theodora 
of the literal mind. 

"I don't know," she answered. "But I 
think there's something in fairy tales that's 
true, and I think there is something in that 
that's true. The little red balloon made me 
awfully happy, and perhaps I'd mean that 
God would take care of the happiness in it 
for me, and keep it till I came. But what- 
ever is the true part of it, I somehow know 
I'd say that to my little girl, and she would 
go out and play again, and have a better 
[71] 



£5!)s Gtteat BODenture 

time than before even; and besides, she'd 
never be afraid to tell me her thoughts. 
Sometimes, after that, I wouldn't tell my 
mother some of the things I was thinking, 
for fear she would tell me they were 
naughty. To me they didn't seem so, but 
you never could tell. I always remembered 
the balloon." 

"That's an awfully little thing to remem- 
ber, all these years," I said. "I presume 
a hundred such things have happened to me 
and I have forgotten them." 

"It is funny, what things we remember 
and what ones we forget, isn't it?" she 
mused. "All the time I was a little girl in 
that big old house looks to me now like this 
empty air up here above us, with just a few 
little pictures, like this balloon-happening, 
shining out of it like pin-points, here and 
there. It seems to me the times I remem- 
ber are the times that made me surprised or 
glad, or that hurt me inside; and that I re- 
[72] 



<5&e Gtreat HDtoentute 

member more the way I felt than the things 
that happened. Isn't that funny?" 

And so we speculated, lying on our backs, 
under the trees, shading our eyes with our 
hands and gazing up through the dark green 
branches into the blue, blue sky beyond. 



[73] 



®\\t tt re mnttiouH air of gloom. 
— Matthew Arnold 

XVI 

CARROLL'S way of looking at death, 
even when it invaded her own circle 
of friends, was so different from the con- 
ventional way that I believe we never be- 
came quite accustomed to it. One of the 
first times when this peculiarity of her 
niece's attitude was brought to Miss Page's 
notice came when Carroll was about sixteen. 

The aunt came home just at dusk, after 
a round of church calls, solemn and impor- 
tant and full of news. 

"What do you think, Carroll?" she an- 
nounced. "Poor Deacon Everett is dead!" 

"Is he, auntie?" Carroll was sitting on 
the floor in front of the fire-place, playing 
[74] 



G&e Gtteat fifotienture 

with the black-and-white kitten. She 
looked up. 

"Well, I'm glad I had such a lovely talk 
with him the other day about plans for the 
League this winter. There's not another 
person could give me so much help and 
good advice." 

"I think it's rather unfeeling, my dear, 
to be thinking of yourself instead of the 
poor man!" 

"Why do you say c poor man,' Aunt 
Sophy? Do you think he has gone to 
Hell?" 

"Carroll! What a dreadful thing to say! 
Even if he had, what a brutal way to put 
it! And how could you even ask such a 
question about him? A good man like 
Deacon Everett going to — to that place!" 

"He has always been good, hasn't he?" 
approved Carroll. "Then you surely be- 
lieve that he has gone to Heaven, don't 
you?" 

[75] 



«5&e 0xm BotJentute 

"Gone to Heaven? Why, of course I do, 
child! But death is solemn and dreadful, 
no matter how you look at it." 

"Why?" persisted Carroll. "Is it reli- 
gious to think it dreadful? If it is, what's 
the use of religion? Or don't you truly be- 
lieve what religion teaches?" 

"Oh, of course I believe he's happy in 
Heaven now," grudgingly admitted Miss 
Page, "but it seems irreverent for you to 
talk about it the way you do. And besides, 
aren't you sorry a single bit for his wife 
and daughter? That's what comes of never 
having been converted and joining the 
church !" 

"But I am very sorry for Mrs. Everett 
and Anna. Of course they will miss him, 
dreadfully. I missed you, when you were 
away at Grandma's, that six months, and 
you left me here with Elsa. All I wanted 
to know, just now, was why you said 'poor 
Mr. Everett,' if you believe he's having a 
[76] 



<5&e Gtreat BDtienture 

better time than we are, at this very minute." 

"And to think," went on Aunt Sophia, 
dismissing her niece's comparison as irrele- 
vant, "to think he was out at prayer-meet- 
ing only night before last; and just as smil- 
ing and cheerful as usual; even made jokes 
afterwards, as someone recalls, about our 
Fair ! He little dreamed, then, that the end 
was so near, poor man! Well, it should be 
a lesson to all of us!" 

"What lesson, Aunt Sophy?" Carroll 
stroked the kitten and looked at the fire. 

"That 'in the midst of life we are in 
death,' " quoted Miss Page. " 'We know 
not what hour the Bridegroom cometh.' 
We should be prepared, any moment, for 
the summons to meet our Maker." 

"Oh, auntie!" cried Carroll, in genuine 
distress, at last, "what a terribly gruesome 
sort of thing you make it ! To be constantly 
'prepared to meet one's Maker,' seems, the 
way you say it, to be the most depressing 
[77] 



<5&e ©treat Bfotietnure 

thing to be prepared for in the world! It 
looks so diif erent to me — but I suppose that 
is because I always did like surprises, and 
that is going to be such a big surprise; for 
after all we don't really know anything 
about it. Sometimes I feel as if I can 
hardly wait!" 

"Oh, Carroll, Carroll!" sighed her aunt. 
"I wish your poor mother had lived and 
brought you up ! I've done the best I could, 
but when you go on like this, I'm fright- 
ened. It all sounds like blasphemy to me, 
talking about what comes after death as a 
surprise — a pleasant one, too — and being in 
a hurry to gratify your curiosity, instead 
of grounding your faith in the Bible, which 
tells you all about it, and which ought to 
be your sure and sufficient guide unto eter- 
nal life ! And yet no one can say I haven't 
faithfully tried to give you sound religious 
instruction and training!" 

"No, no one can say that, and no one 
[78] 



C56e Gtreat Bfotienture 

would better, in my presence!" said Car- 
roll, jumping up from the hearth rug and 
giving her aunt's unwilling cheek a laugh- 
ing kiss. "If keeping on living seems a 
natural and un-dreadful sort of thing to me, 
and I'm a discouraging limb,' in conse- 
quence, it surely isn't your fault. So let's 
not feel bad about it, but let's have a nice, 
cosy time, because it's such fun to be to- 
gether in front of a jolly fire on a cold, 
snowy, blowy, winter evening like this! 
Shall I make some tea?" 



[79] 



Aa a man trawling into a far rotmtrn. 
— St. Matthew 

XVII 

©UT the sense of humor was too strong 
in Carroll to allow her to overlook 
tempting opportunities for mischief. 

One day, a few weeks later, Miss Page 
on entering the library found her niece hud- 
dled in the most dejected attitude, her face 
buried in her arms, and deep sobs shaking 
her from head to foot. 

"What is the matter?" she asked in alarm. 

"Oh, auntie," came a stifled voice, "poor 
Mary Royce is going to Berlin to study 
music and will be gone three years, at 
least!" 

"Why, I know that, child; but why on 
earth do you say 'poor' Mary? It's the 

[80] 



C5&e Gfreat Btroenture 

thing she's been hoping for and counting on 
for years — all her life, you might say." 

"But I saw her only yesterday, before her 
mother told her about the legacy; and she 
so little suspected anything unusual — 
looked so bright and happy!" 

"What are you driving at, Carroll? 
What is there sad about her looking happy 
before she heard the good news? I should 
think you'd be glad she could look happy 
then, for she's happier still to-day." 

"But her poor family — " 

"Good gracious, Carroll! Sometimes I 
almost think you're mentally defective! 
Don't you know the plan is for her family 
to go over and visit her in a year or two? 
Of course they will miss her, while she's 
gone; but I hope they are not so selfish as 
to let that interfere with their rejoicing over 
her good fortune ! And, anyway, you were 
crying your eyes out because of pitying 
'poor Mary. 5 " 

[81] 



C56e Gtreat Bfotoenttire 

"Well," said Carroll, raising somewhat 
ashamed but dancing eyes, "You said, 'poor 
Deacon Everett'!" 

Her aunt looked mystified, perplexed, for 
a moment. Then, with sudden comprehen- 
sion, she emitted a sound of utter disgust, 
and swept disapprovingly from the room. 



[82] 



Atintljrr gotten rfjamb* r .... 
Cargwr lljan U|tH ta* Uaa*, anil iavtlxtv. 

— P. A. Baiuey 

XVIII 

HOR a long time, it seemed to me incon- 
sistent in Carroll that one who had so 
keen an appreciation of life should feel so 
cheerful and light-hearted at the thought of 
"leaving it all," as I should have called it; 
in other words, on the subject of death. 

"I should think you'd hate it," I said to 
her finally, one day, when I mustered up 
courage to open the subject. 

"Why, I guess that is just the reason I 
don't hate it," she replied, after her usual 
pause to think the matter out. "I love life 
because it is so interesting; you never know 
what is going to happen next, so you never 
get bored. It's like reading a book; if one 
page is dry, you know that when you turn 
the leaf the next page may be sparkling. 

[ 8 *3 



(5&e ©treat Efctoenture 

And so, some days might seem dull and 
stupid if one didn't always know that the 
next ones may hold pleasant surprises in 
store." 

"Yes, that is life; I understand that," I 
said. "But how about death?" 

"Well, Theodora," Carroll said, quite 
slowly, "to my mind it is all, life here, and 
life later, in short, Life, — just like an ad- 
venture ; new and wonderful things happen- 
ing to us all the time as we wander on, 
eager-eyed, pleased with the pleasant things, 
and not bothered, over-much, by the loud 
but harmless roar of the lions. And when 
the time comes for us to be advanced into 
a different state of being, as the butterfly 
is when it leaves the cocoon, why, it seems 
to me that is the most interesting happening 
of all. Yes, that's the best way I can de- 
scribe how it looks to me, when I stop to 
think it out, — that which people call death — 
like a wonderful, great adventure." 

[84] 



© 



Oily* ttt rttal gwrtwrtatj.— Schiller 

XIX 

HEN Carroll's father died, and she did 
not put on mourning, there was a good 
deal of comment in the circle of her friends. 
But it was not until several weeks had passed 
by, and some of us were spending an after- 
noon at little Ellen White's house, making 
Christmas presents, that one of the girls ven- 
tured to broach the subject, tentatively, to 
Carroll herself. 

"Why should I wear black?" she parried. 
"I don't advertise by my style of dress any 
other sort of event in my private life. Why 
should I this one?" 

"Well, it seems to me rather the right 
thing to do, as a mark of respect," suggested 
Kate Pearson. 

"Respect?" repeated Carroll. "If the 

[85] 



<5&e Gtreat Efotienture 

creatures that become butterflies — the grubs 
— if the immediate family of one of those 
who had found his wings and flew away 
could change their color to black or gold or 
sky-blue, I don't see how it would be show- 
ing respect to the happy one that had gone 
a-flying so much as it would be a self-im- 
portant attracting of attention to them- 
selves." 

"That parallel is foolish, Carroll, ,, an- 
other of the girls put in. "What one means 
by 'respect' is really love. People are in- 
clined to think one doesn't care, is heartless, 
if one makes no outward sign." 

"If people's only way of deciding whether 
or not I love my father is by looking at 
the color of my dress now," said Carroll, 
with some heat, "then I don't believe I care 
much for their opinion. If I've never shown 
it in any real way, worth counting, I'd be a 
hypocrite to try to intimate it conventionally 
now!" 

[86] 



O&e Gfreat BotJentute 

"Don't you think, dear," said gentle Mrs. 
White, little Ellen's mother, who had been 
passing through the room and had paused 
a moment, her attention arrested by the 
conversation, "Don't you think that mourn- 
ing dress is a protection? I feel that it shel- 
ters one from the pain of careless questions 
or distressing remarks, which might be 
made, through ignorance, by those who 
would not otherwise guess what had hap- 
pened." 

"How do you mean, Mrs. White? I 
can't quite imagine what kind of remarks 
and questions would be distressing." 

"Well, I had a friend once, who was asked 
how her daughter was, two or three months 
after she had lost her; such questions as 
that, I mean." 

"How dreadfully hard for her!" came 
our commiserating murmur. 

"And," went on Mrs. White, in her sweet, 
half-pleading voice, "when people aren't 
[87] 



O&e Gfreat Bfefcentute 

warned in that generally adopted way to 
be on their guard, it is of course quite nat- 
ural for them to refer to those who have 
gone in the most casual, familiar manner. 
I even knew a man, once, to make a joke 
to a woman about her husband, who had re- 
cently passed away. You can imagine how 
he felt, when he found out, and as for her — " 

"Oh, Mrs. White!" we girls cried, in con- 
sternation at the thought. 

But Carroll was imperturbable. 

"The trouble is, we feel so differently 
about the thing itself," she objected. 
"Now, I like to talk about my father, and 
I'd love to have someone joke to me about 
him. I wish he had had more jokes in his 
life, but I hope that now he is going to make 
up for all that lack." 

There was a constrained and disapprov- 
ing silence for a moment, then someone 
asked, 

"But if someone who didn't know what 

[88] 



C5&e Gtteat Bfotientute 

has happened should come up to you sud- 
denly, to-day, and ask how your fath- 
er's cough is, or something like that, wouldn't 
it — wouldn't it nearly kill you, Carroll?" 

We stopped our sewing and looked up to 
see how she took it. It seemed a brutal 
thing to have said, although she had almost 
invited it. • 

Carroll shook her head, slowly. 

"Of course I don't know what I'd say," 
she replied. "One never can forecast the 
words one would use; but I am sure it 
wouldn't hurt me any more than it would 
Mrs. Royce if a friend asked her some such 
thing about Mary. 

" 'Why, didn't you know Mary's gone to 
Germany to study?' she'd naturally reply. 
And then the other person would remark, 
'How nice for Mary!' and would probably 
add, 'But it must be awfully lonely for you, 
Mrs. Royce!' and she would say, 'Yes, of 
course it is ; I miss her all the time, for Mary 
[89] 



is such a dear girl.' — I don't see why peo- 
ple shouldn't talk in that same natural, 
pleasant way about their friends who are to 
be away longer than Mary. I think there's 
more of death in the awful silences about 
them, than there is in their going itself." 

"I'll tell you why I should wear mourn- 
ing," I said to Carroll, on our way home. 
"It is just because it is the customary thing 
to do, and I think you are looked at and 
talked about more if you don't do it than 
if you do. So I'd wear it in self-defense." 

"How many unnatural things connected 
with death seem to be 'customary!'" Car- 
roll stormed, quickening her pace. "Isn't 
it curious that at the time of all times when 
people should be free and untrammeled, 
they are fettered by rites and ceremonies 
and fashions stronger than iron chains? 
That when one would elect quiet and oppor- 
tunity for thought and memory of the one 
[90] 



G&e Gtreat Bfotientute 

who has gone on, one's whole attention is 
required for irrelevant details in regard to 
decking the body of the living, or burying 
the body of the dead?" 

"But the dead have to be buried, and the 
living have to be dressed." 

"Not with pomp and ceremony and 
parade of grief, if one really believes that 
what is left is but the empty shell; and not 
with the particular color and texture pre- 
scribed by fashion-books, if one's thought 
is of life, not death. No, Theodora, I don't 
believe these things 'have to' be done, any 
more than Chinese women have to torture 
their feet, or Indian widows to be burned on 
the funeral pyres of their husbands." 



[91] 



£faa§Ijt w Biuret aa mflanrffalg,— Burtok 

XX 

ONE of the funniest Carroll-incidents 
I ever knew about was connected with 
the last illness of our friend, Mrs. Crumb. 

The poor old lady had been half dead for 
years; literally, for half her body was com- 
pletely paralyzed; and she was weak and 
fragile, so that when a severe cold assailed 
her, that year of the blizzard, there was 
nothing left in her to resist its onslaught. 
Finally, when the doctor told someone she 
could not live more than two or three days 
longer at the utmost, Mrs. Crumb somehow 
heard of it; and so, when her friends came 
tip-toeing in to see her, they had a most dis- 
mal time of commiseration and leave-taking. 

Carroll had been one of Mrs. Crumb's 
[92] 



C5&e Gtreat Bfotoentute 

faithful servitors for years, going every few 
days to read aloud to her, or to take her a 
leaf or a flower, or, better still, a nosegay 
of gossip; so of course, as luck would have 
it, she happened in at this very time when 
the doctor's verdict had wrought its havoc. 
The room was pervaded by an atmosphere 
of heaviness and gloom, damp handker- 
chiefs were in use, and speeches of consola- 
tion and resignation, in turn, were being 
made, when Carroll came briskly in and said 
"Good-morning!" in her gay, bright way, 
just as usual. 

Everyone looked at her in scandalized dis- 
approbation, and as soon as was decent after 
the greetings, Mrs. Crumb asked, with ill- 
concealed importance, "Hasn't anyone told 
you what Dr. Brown gave out about me, 
this morning?" 

Handkerchiefs ostentatiously in use 
again, throughout the room. Carroll ad- 
mitted her ignorance. 
[93] 



CD&e Gtreat BotieMure 

"He says I can't live more than a few 
days longer," announced the afflicted one, 
with the air of one hurling an explosive 
bomb at the newcomer, and then standing 
back to watch the effect. 

"Oh, Mrs. Crumb!" cried Carroll, joy- 
fully, "How lovely for you to be almost 
through with this troublesome body that 
won't do what you want it to! Aren't you 
delighted?" 

There was such consternation in the room 
that people forgot their handkerchiefs en- 
tirely and just stared at the intruder, open- 
mouthed. The fact that they, every one of 
them, in their secret souls, wondered "what 
on earth Mrs. Crumb should want to live 
for" did not mitigate their horror at this 
undisguised cheerfulness in meeting the 
situation. It seemed like an "affront to 
Providence," as someone said about it after- 
wards. 

"And just think of the wonderful things 
[94] 



C56e Gtteat Sfowntute 

you'll be knowing all about, in a few days," 
went on Carroll, happily unconscious, "while 
we shall still be guessing! Oh, I envy you, 
Mrs. Crumb!" 

The funny part of the incident lay in 
Mrs. Crumb's being so injured, and almost 
insulted, at having her tragic eminence as- 
sailed, that she dropped her mournful tones 
and solemn, hushed manner, and became 
quite commonplace and peppery in her re- 
marks. If it had not been a physical im- 
possibility, she would have stiffened with 
indignation. In lieu of this, her old eyes 
snapped, and when she told Carroll that she 
had long been a subject of prayer with her, 
her manner almost suggested that of the 
prophet of old, on the occasion of his deal- 
ing with certain garrulous and irreverent 
children. Mrs. Sanborn, who was there, 
and who told me about it, has very little 
sense of humor, but even she had to smile, 
as she recalled the change from the manner 
[95] 



©&e ©treat Sfotoenture 

of a pious saint raising brimming and re- 
signed eyes to heaven as she suffered mar- 
tyrdom, to that of a cross old woman child- 
ishly indignant at being envied instead of 
sympathized with, and having sunshine per- 
vade her sick-room instead of thunder- 
storm gloom and wax tapers. 



[96] 



5fa ttrtnb ran bloat tmj bark airtrag.— John Burroughs 

XXI 

HS we emerged from girlhood into 
young womanhood, the peculiarity of 
that side of Carroll's ideas which we vaguely 
termed her "religious beliefs" set her more 
and more in a class by herself. I do not 
mean that she was not one of us in every 
outward sense; for, just as in her childhood, 
she was always in the very center of all 
things light-hearted, and "fun" was just as 
dear to her as ever. But it seemed curious 
to me then, it seems strange to me now, that 
just because a human being's ideas about 
death were unique and decided, that indi- 
vidual should seem so completely different 
from his fellows. For that was the way it 
was with Carroll; the rest of us were like 
a herd, and she was an individual apart. 
I do not think she was more perfect than 
[97] 



C5&e Gtreat Bfotienture 

the rest of us; her impulsive nature led her 
into many small pitfalls and one very large 
one; she was always falling, in the march 
of life, but she always picked herself up 
with a laugh, and trudged brightly on as if 
there were no possibility of her ever repeat- 
ing the accident. Her nature was so happy 
at the core that gloom and depression had 
positively no chance with her; and the sad 
things of life — the things we of the rest of 
the world call sad — had for her no horrors, 
because they had no foundation. 

If Carroll's ideas had not been an actual 
and unassumed part of her, we, with the 
arrogance and brutality of youth, should 
have had no patience with them, and open 
ridicule would have been her portion. But 
whatever she might not have been, we knew 
she was genuine ; so we accepted her "queer- 
ness," respected it to a certain extent, and, 
as the years went on, it became in a way 
even an unacknowledged comfort to us. 
[98] 



O&e ©treat Stotoenture 

Of course, it was almost immoral for one to 
be so untouched by solemnity and gloom in 
respect to the most serious facts of exist- 
ence; but still, when "dreadful" things hap- 
pened, in times of sickness and mortal anxi- 
ety and death, the knowledge that to her 
they were not "dreadful," but natural, in- 
teresting, and sometimes even happy, often 
sent us to her just to be inconsistently 
warmed by the brightness and cheer which 
we did not believe in, but which we found, 
nevertheless, strangely comforting at such 
times. 

But the really curious aspect of the situa- 
tion lay in the fact that it was not alone in 
times of illness and suffering, and of those 
great crises where the heart almost stops 
beating and the whole world is suddenly 
changed, by one's being brought face to face 
with the tremendous fundamental problems 
of existence — it was not at such times alone 
that Carroll's buoyancy and assurance set 
[99] 



C5&e Gfceat Bo&enture 

her apart from others. That would have 
been merely what one would have expected. 
But that one's confident feeling about what 
we call "the end," the end that comes in the 
always vaguely remote future, and that 
seems so shut away from our outer con- 
sciousness and voluntary contemplation as 
to be, almost, a matter of theoretical and 
academic interest only, should reduce to a 
beautiful simplicity and irradiate with 
brightness every step of the way towards 
it — that was something we never should 
have believed possible, if we had not seen 
repeated proofs of it in Carroll's life. Out 
of scores of incidents which I recall even 
yet, I will mention just one, for it is fairly 
typical in showing the dissimilarity of her 
habitual attitude from ours in the daily hap- 
penings of life, as well as in its great 
tragedies. 

Several of us, "our crowd," had gone off 
on the train, on a day's excursion. We 
[100] 



C56e Gfreat Efttoenture 

were in the long tunnel under the river, on 
the return trip, when the train came to one 
of those sudden, dead stops, followed by ab- 
solute silence, which brings such a feeling 
of blankness and finality. An unscheduled 
stop, especially in a tunnel, is always to the 
timorous suggestive of danger. For a few 
minutes we kept on with our gay laugh- 
ing and talking, the six of us, trying not to 
notice that we were not speeding along as 
we ought to be doing. Then something 
happened that made me throw aside the 
flimsy pretense and give an exclamation of 
alarm. It was merely that the rear-end 
brakeman passed through our car to- 
wards the front of the train, his lantern in 
his hand. 

"Why isn't he back on the track, with 
that light?" I asked. "Do you suppose we 
are stopping here, where we ought not to 
be, without any signal behind us to announce 
it to an oncoming train?" 
[101] 



G&e Gtreat Sfotienture 

"He certainly is the one that should at- 
tend to the signaling," said Kate Pearson. 
"In this short local train there isn't anyone 
else who could possibly have gone ; it means 
that no one is there." 

"Let's leave the train men to manage 
their own business; they ought to know as 
much about it as we do," someone suggested. 
"Probably we are going to start right 
away." 

But we did not start, and we heard the 
men working at one of our wheels, even as 
she spoke. Of course we could see noth- 
ing, for it was perfectly black outside, and 
we could not open a window to look out, as 
the tunnel was full of choking smoke. 

"It must be a hot box," said Anna, "and 
no one knows how long we shall have to 
stay here." 

We were all nervous. In fact, everyone 
in the car seemed to be, though all tried not 
to show it. With that superficial optimism 

[102] 



D&e Gtteat BDtoenture 

that seems to be in order when, in times of 
possible danger, the demand of decorum 
for outward composure still dominates the 
inward fear, we began to offer stout- 
hearted suggestions. 

"Those in charge of this train couldn't 
be so careless as not to post a signal be- 
hind," said one. 

But countless times they do forget, and 
countless accidents happen that way, the in- 
ner thought of all of us made answer. 

"There may not be a train due for hours, 
and they may know it, and so not need to 
signal," said another. 

We all thought of the possibility of extra 
trains and unscheduled "freights." 

"Well, worry won't help matters, and it 
isn't a bit likely that anything really will 
run into us," argued another voice, the qual- 
ity of the tone belying the confident words. 

Then up spoke Carroll. 

"Well, what if it should?" she said, and 

[103] 



<3&e ©treat Bfotienture 

we saw that her face was as bright and com- 
posed as usual. 

"What if it should?" I cried, turning on 
her, and letting off some of my bottled nerv- 
ousness; "why, if it should, we'd all be 
ground to atoms in an instant, that's all!" 

Carroll shook her head, smiling a little. 

"Carroll Page, aren't you the very least 
little bit afraid?" asked Kate. 

"Why, no," Carroll replied, simply. "It 
couldn't hurt us." 

That was all; but after that the tension 
loosened. The would-be cheerful view we 
had tried to take had not lightened our anxi- 
ety nor lessened our fears, for we had 
known beneath it all the time that there 
was danger, and that an accident might 
come. But with that undramatic accept- 
ance of it, that tranquil "What if it should?" 
the burden of clenched-handed resistance, 
and something of our fear itself, seemed to 
fall from us. 

[104] 



<5&e Great Botientur 

I think this little incident is an illustra- 
tion of the way in which Carroll took life 
in general ; and it was by watching her, and 
noticing these things, that I began to sus- 
pect that to be without, absolutely without, 
that unspoken, unacknowledged, perhaps 
unrealized fear of death, at many turns, to 
be able to bring to every exigency in life a 
light-hearted "Well, what if it should?" at- 
titude — not from fatalism but from a serene 
sense of unassailable security — must mean 
to have a very different view of "things 
present" as well as of "things to come," from 
that of most of us. 



[105] 



3t araa aa on tl|* opening of a door 
$g ont wljo in I|iB Jjano a lamp onto. nolo. 
— R. W. Gilder 

XXII 

X REMEMBER well— which one of 
the group that was there does not? — ■ 
the time when Carroll conceived and an- 
nounced her surprising plan. 

It was a Saturday morning in mid-win- 
ter. Several of us in the little room down- 
town rented by the "flower mission/' were 
arranging from the masses of cut flowers 
which had been sent in by florists and 
friends, for the purpose, the individual bas- 
kets and bouquets that were presently to be 
taken to the various hospitals and tenement- 
houses on our list for that morning. The 
talk embraced things pleasant and unpleas- 
ant, and gossipy in general, as such talks 
will, and in time it touched upon the recent 
funeral of our minister's wife. There was 
[106] 



G&e Gtreat Efttoenture 

a difference of recollection about some de- 
tail — what hymn was sung at the close, or 
some such matter — and Carroll, who had 
been silent, was appealed to, to settle the 
dispute. 

"I wasn't there," she said. 

"Carroll never goes to funerals," I ap- 
pended, half complainingly. 

"Well," said Anna Everett, "I've noticed 
that, and I'd really like to know why not? 
I should think you would be just the one 
to go, Carroll, since you feel so sure about 
death." 

"Oh, I don't like to go," replied Carroll, 
easily, "because they are so gloomy, and I 
get tired of seeing people so melancholy 
and hopeless who profess something quite 
different." 

"Don't you think," suggested Kate, 
"that that's just a little bit selfish, Carroll? 
As a mark of respect ought you not to sac- 
rifice your feelings at such times?" 
[107] 



C56e Gfreat BDtienture 

"No, it doesn't seem to me that it is really 
selfish. I don't know any better guide than 
the Golden Rule, and in this matter, at 
least, I follow that." 

"Golden Rule?" echoed Edith Styles, 
who had come among us recently, and prob- 
ably had not had time to learn of Carroll's 
"queerness." 

"I mean, you needn't feel obliged to come 
to my funeral, and have a ceremony over 
this thing I'm going to part with. I don't 
see why you should make a function at that 
time, anyway, any more than you would 
make one over my old clothes which I shall 
leave at home, next week, when I go visit- 
ing, and take my best along with me." 

"But it isn't the custom to have functions 
over old clothes, and it is, over bodies," ob- 
jected Eunice Sanborn, who was growing 
into Carroll's way of looking at things, but 
growing step by step. "And we don't have 
funerals so much for the sake of those who 

[108] 



<3&e ©treat ElDtoemure 

have gone as we do for those who are near- 
est them. How would your Aunt Sophy 
feel, if not a person came to your funeral?" 

One or two of the girls giggled, but Car- 
roll propped her chin on her hand and gazed 
thoughtfully at the speaker. 

"And yet, upon whom does this funeral 
business fall hardest?" she said, slowly, 
thinking it out, in her way. "For whom 
is it the greatest horror and nightmare ? In 
my case it will be Aunt Sophy. She will 
shudderingly go through the ordeal because 
you expect it, and you will shrinkingly 
come to the function because she expects it; 
it will have no effect whatever upon me, ex- 
cept to make me weep at so much unhap- 
piness — and what good will it do anyone? 
Worse than none, for it will do positive 
harm to each one present because of its em- 
phasizing the wrong thing. Girls — " she 
paused, weighing the matter before decid- 
ing, and then speaking in her quick, posi- 
[109] 



tD6e Gtreat BDtienture 

tive way, — "I'm not going to have a fu- 
neral!" 

Some of us laughed. "What are you go- 
ing to do — be translated, as Enoch was? 
'He was not, for God took him'?" 

"Yes, just that way," she answered gaily, 
"exactly that way! And all my friends and 
my blessed aunt have got to be glad about 
it, and weep nary one foolish and mistaken 
tear!" 

"I think," said Kate, "that you are going 
a little too far, Carroll. This is too serious 
a matter to jest over. Funerals are dread- 
ful and harrowing and all that, I know, but 
so is death; and so long as there is death in 
the world there will be funerals; so it does 
no good to gird at the custom, nor even to 
talk about it." 

"Kate," Carroll said, gently and seriously, 

"I'm not jesting; I'm absolutely in earnest. 

Why have funerals got to be? It's only 

a custom, and I'll bet it isn't a Christian 

[no] 



G&e Gtreat BDtientute 

custom, at that! Death is dreadful, in the 
way most people take it, but I truly believe 
it would lose a great deal of its horror if 
we did away with all that happens between 
the actual passing of the spirit, and the 
grave. Think a minute of the death of any- 
one you have known, of Mrs. Beebe, whom 
you have just been talking of, what does 
your mind image, first of all? Not her real 
going, not her life now, not even her fam- 
ily's loss — but that painful, emotional, 
stereotyped ceremony you attended ! Death 
means sorrow, because it means partings; 
but why do we persist in adding a difficult 
and gloomy burden to that sorrow? When 
the parting actually has come, why do we, 
by custom, force several days of heartrend- 
ing ceremonial, for it is all ceremonial, 
every bit of it, upon those who are often 
worn out physically, and who are mentally 
unfitted for complying with this last exac- 
tion at the hands of society?" 
[in] 



<5&e Gtreat Bfotoenture 

"I can see," agreed Anna, "how it would 
be a great relief not to have to go through 
certain things. I remember when my father 
died, how heart-breaking seemed the place 
in which he lay, those two intervening days 
before the funeral ; and what a strain it was 
to mother to see the friends that came and 
talked in hushed voices, and wanted to go 
for a minute into that cold room. We were 
conscious of that part of the house and what 
it held, every moment; and the memory of 
those days and of what happened last of 
all does stand out, as you say, Carroll. 
Yet how can such a custom be changed? 
Who would dare to go against it?" 

"I would," said Carroll, "because I be- 
lieve in changing it, and of course one dares 
do what one believes in ! But you girls will 
have to do your part, too, if it ever happens ; 
you'll have to help Aunt Sophy!" 

Then she evolved a plan, rilling in the de- 
tails as she went along. We listened, half 

[112] 



<5&e ©[teat Bnuentute 

captured, half scandalized, but somehow 
there was no really escaping her magnetism 
and her joyous assurance. 

"Oh, I do hope I shall go first, so you can 
see how much better that way will be," she 
said, at the end. "Of course I'd like to be 
here and have one of you do it; but then, I 
guess I can imagine it well enough, and I'd 
just love to demonstrate it myself!" 



[113] 



Snttht that % pompr ran fill tlj* Ijrart tijat tyij 
pamtv t xpanda ? — Browning 

XXIII 

CARROLL was one of those rare per- 
sons who can possess vital convictions 
and ideas without the desire of foisting 
them upon the whole community, through 
a mistaken hope of reforming the world. 
Without any feeling at all that death was 
too solemn to talk about — for to her it was 
just as simple and natural a matter as any 
of the things in our daily experience — her 
respect for other people's traditions and in- 
stincts led her to a reticence maintained 
with perfect sweetness, except when the 
subject was broached or invited by others. 
Consequently it was in a natural and un- 
forced way that she came to outline to me 
some of her imaginings about what comes 
after "the end"; for it was a time of real 

[114] 



Otz ©[teat BDtientute 

need in my own life, and I turned to her 
instinctively for help. 

It was just before I was to have a sur- 
gical operation performed at a hospital, 
and as the case was considered serious and 
the outcome very uncertain, I found myself 
full of foreboding and anxiety. 

Carroll spent the day before the opera- 
tion at the hospital with me. Her sym- 
pathy for my state of mind was genuine, 
and it helped me, but even then it was the 
knowledge of her own "queer" convictions 
that was most comforting. 

"Do you suppose I'll live, Carroll?" I 
asked, in the futile way one does, because 
of the desire to hear reassuring words, 
though one knows they can be words only. 

"Yes, I do, Theodora. You're strong 
and sturdy, and I don't believe you'll let go 
your grip," she encouraged me, staunchly. 

"I suppose you, in my place, wouldn't 
mind a bit?" I asked, weakly smiling. 

[115] 



O&e Gtreat HDttenture 

"Oh, yes; I'd mind the discomfort, and 
the sickness — and the expense!" she added, 
ruefully. Carroll always had to think of 
expense. 

' 'But, if the worst should happen — Oh, 
Carroll, I am not ready to leave this beauti- 
ful world, this beautiful, beautiful world, 
full of its human joys and hopes and aspira- 
tions ! There are so many things I want to 
do and accomplish, so many lovely things 
I want to take part in and experience. I 
have hardly begun to live yet; I can't bear 
to think of leaving it all!" 

"But you won't have to leave it all; not 
in any case !" urged Carroll. "You are you, 
and you'll always be you, and you'll keep 
your ability to live and enjoy to the full, 
even if you don't come out of the ether into 
this world." 

"Oh, of course," I said, drearily, 
"Heaven, and that sort of thing; but I want 
the gaiety and joy of the flesh — of this life." 
[116] 



©&e ©treat Sfotienture 

Carroll looked at me with those thought- 
ful, puzzled eyes, trying to get just my 
point of view, so that she could put her own 
more clearly. 

"By 'Heaven' do you mean something 
vague and hazy and wishy-washy?" she 
asked, as usual failing to temper her words 
to the shorn lamb which I had been brought 
up to consider all "religious" subjects. 
"You don't imagine that we'll be less gay 
and light-hearted than we are now, do you? 
That having once been vivid in experience, 
we shall attain to a featureless, flaccid ex- 
istence? How could we? It is because we 
are vivid, because we have that wonderful 
sense of undying aliveness that we are jus- 
tified in believing that sense is indestruc- 
tible." 

I agreed, but still half-heartedly, resign- 
edly, as we do, perforce, at mortal crises of 
our lives. 

"Yes, I suppose that is so; and that we 
[117] 



C56e Great Stoemure 

shall be blessed, which Carlyle says is better 
than being merely happy, and all that. 
But, Carroll, though you'd think I would 
be glad at the idea of rest and peace, yet 
somehow — " 

" Why, of course you aren't!" she inter- 
rupted. "Who that is full of life is enam- 
ored of the idea of perpetual inaction? I 
am sure that's not what I want. I want 
life, activity, problems, — yes, even perplex- 
ities and puzzles and bufferings — every- 
thing that makes up the round sum of real 
living; and there will be plenty of these, 
I'm sure, all the way along." 

"Oh, Carroll, you make it sound almost 
interesting; but how could there be prob- 
lems up there?" 

"Oh, Theodora, I don't make it sound one- 
millionth as 'interesting' as I know it is go- 
ing to be ! What makes you think it is 'up 
there,' at all? And who would care a rap 
for it if the answers were all given bef ore- 
Ins] 



C5fte Gtreat Stotoentttre 

hand, or if we were going to hibernate or 
turn into a kind of sanctified jelly-fish?" 

"Well, granting even that," I said, after 
a pause, "activity is not all I want. I have 
to confess to desires and satisfactions that 
lie on a lower plane. I want to be gay, as 
I am here, in this world ; I want to sing and 
dance and ride horseback and skate and go 
to the theater and read books! I suppose 
you can't understand such a groveling list 
of pleasure and state of mind, when I ought 
to be repeating the Penitential Psalm; but 
I'm trying to speak the truth for once, the 
poor, real, miserable truth." 

Carroll laughed. "I don't see why you 
should call those things of a low order. 
Who knows what is high or low? For my 
part, I'd hate to pull everything to pieces 
and decide, for they're all lovely, though so 
different. It's enjoyment that counts — 
whether it comes from looking at a wonder- 
ful prospect from a mountain top, or hear- 
[119] 



Gfie ©[teat fifotientute 

ing a symphony, or walking in a splendid 
wind, or swimming in the big sea, or mov- 
ing to music in a ballroom, or touching the 
hand of a friend who loves you. Every 
single one of them makes your eyes shine 
and a glow come to you at the thought of 
the beauty of life, and causes something in 
you say and to feel 'Thank God!' And 
that is the root of the whole matter," added 
Carroll, meditatively. "God, or whatever 
you may call the splendid Intelligence that 
devised all these things — soft air and moun- 
tain tops, and wind and water and snow and 
ice, and human throat instrument for sing- 
ing, and ear for music, and pleasure in 
rhythm, and joy in exercise and games and 
striving, and heart for loving — that Intelli- 
gence is at the bottom of it, and has proven 
such a marvelous Originator and Inventor 
and Planner for possibilities of enjoyment, 
right now, that I don't see how we can, in 
reason, distrust His ability to keep on. I, 

[120] 



C5fce Gtteat fifoaenture 

for my part, am willing to risk it, and just 
expect fine and splendid surprises — as that 
first northern winter was full of undreamed 
of sports and pleasures for my little cousin 
John, when he came up from Cuba." 

"But spirit — spirit can't enjoy the things 
I mean; spirit couldn't!" 

"How do you know? It's spirit that does 
the enjoying now, isn't it? And it's rather 
dangerous to say what can or can't happen 
beyond the limit of our own experience. 
That, too, reminds me of John's precon- 
ceived ideas, and how they were upset. Do 
you remember about him?" 

"Not in any such connection as this," I 
answered, listlessly. 

"Well, you know his father was a planter 
there; and when he and my aunt took vaca- 
tions and came up to "the States," they al- 
ways left the children at home, so that John 
was twelve when he first went to Canada for 
the winter. 

[121] 



<5&e Great Httoenture 

"They had told him how in the north- 
ern winter the water becomes solid, so 
that it would bear one's weight. He has 
told me since how he used to puzzle over 
that one statement, and think, 'Why, it 
can't be so; at least, not our kind of 
water; it stands to reason it isn't so!' 
And yet his parents, who made the asser- 
tion, had actually been there and seen it ! I 
suppose he would have been more skeptical 
still if they hadn't seen it themselves, and 
had only deduced it from their knowledge 
of physics. Then, John loved his home and 
didn't want to leave it for the northern 
school at all. He says he just knew that 
would be the end of his fun. He used to 
ask if the northern boys went swimming all 
the year round, and had coral to dive for, 
and could go barefooted all the time, and 
had the same tropical fruits to eat that he 
had in Cuba: and when he was told they 
didn't do and have exactly these things, 

[122] 



<5&e Gtreat Btotoentute 

but had just as much fun in other ways — 
sleighing, snow-balling, tobogganing, skee- 
ing, and so on — he was awfully melancholy, 
and felt exactly as you do now, Theodora; 
said he s'posed he'd enjoy it, but that was 
because he would be older and different and 
wouldn't expect to have fun any more. 

"And he was the most surprised boy, when 
he found that 'up north' he was just as much 
of a rollicking harum-scarum as ever — 
really more so, because the bracing air 
whipped his blood into circulation and gave 
him a zest and keenness for enjoyment he 
had never known before, and life was jollier 
than he had ever dreamed." 

"That's very nice," I said, half sadly, "if 
it were a true analogy. But of course you're 
only imagining there's any similitude." 

"Why, of course I am!" said Carroll, 
brightly. "I don't know what it's going to 
be. All I mean by speaking of John is, 
that our experiences right now are full of 

[123] 



£5&e Gtreat Htttenture 

surprises and apparent contradictions to 
reason, and so we needn't, if we don't want 
to, assume that existence without the flesh 
means some kind of blessed, impersonal in- 
anity! I expect the kind of happiness that 
you call gayety, of course. Is that big ele- 
ment of my nature going to be dropped, all 
at once — that almost nicest part of it, that 
God put there Himself? Then I wouldn't 
be Carroll Page!" 

That evening several different people 
came in to see me, and they all talked kindly 
and encouragingly. And my mother was 
tender and consoling and hopeful, and the 
nurses were angels of sweetness and light. 
But none of these had so much effect in re- 
moving apprehension and dread from the 
dark hour into which I walked the next day, 
as had that thought given me by the "athe- 
istic" Carroll — of the originality and com- 
petence of the "Splendid Intelligence" that 
had made my life here so sweet. 

[124] 



Art than poor, unb tjaat tljmt yalbm Blumbtts. 
(3 amppt (EontPttt 
— T. Dekker 

XXIV 

JX^HEN I said that Carroll's impulsive na- 
VL/ ture led her into one serious pitfall, I 
was thinking of her marriage. She never 
by word or sign acknowledged that it had 
been a mistake, and out of loyalty to what I 
know would have been her wishes I must 
touch as lightly as I can on this experience 
of her life. 

It is sufficient to say that he was a cripple, 
and that this affliction served to Carroll as a 
veil hiding his moral unsoundness, and elic- 
iting her headlong, all-giving sympathy, and 
all her tenderness. He was also a musician, 
and had the articulate artistic temperament ; 
so that he undoubtedly made the most of the 
fact that his deformity cut him off from 

[125] 



<5&e Gtreat Boaenture 

many of the natural pleasures of life, and 
did it with a poignant dramatic force that 
must especially have appealed to the girl 
who so loved life in all its fullness and rich- 
ness. All this I merely guess at, having 
known her as I did, and so having been able 
to picture the kind of man who would nat- 
urally have won her heart. What everyone 
knew about the matter was that she started 
by being his champion against the rest of 
us, feeling that our judgments were harsh 
and unjust, and ended by marrying him. 

They began housekeeping on the out- 
skirts of the town, and Carroll carried into 
the poverty of this new life the same light- 
heartedness and capacity for enjoyment 
that had marked her girlhood. I remember 
going to her one morning to carry some 
message or invitation from "the old crowd," 
and finding her flushed, and a little tired- 
looking, hammering away at some boxes in 
the middle of the kitchen. She sank down 
[126] 



O&e Gtteat Bitoentute 

on the floor, Turk fashion, as I entered, and 
pushing back the damp rings of hair from 
her forehead, looked up with the old re- 
doubtable smile. 

"Oh, Theodora!" she exclaimed, in a nice 
way she had that seemed to say my coming 
was the one thing she most wanted, "it's 
wonderful, the things one can do with boxes 
and barrels! This is a dressing-table that 
I am fabricating now. Isn't it going to be 
a darling? And just come and see the 
book-cases I've made, and the barrel chair!" 

She led me into the small parlor, and gaily 
indicated the results of her labors. 

"This I actually made all myself," she 
said, pointing with pride to a very good- 
looking library table, and running her hand 
caressingly over its smooth brown surface. 
I did every bit of it, planning and planing, 
sawing and finishing; and I'm prouder of it 
than of any canvas I ever dabbled paint 
over!" 

[127] 



Otis ©treat Bfotienture 

"But you are tired, Carroll, dear!" I ex- 
postulated, as I had done when we were lit- 
tle girls and she was stacking wood. "You 
work all the time, now, and don't ever give 
yourself recreation. Oh, if you only had a 
little more of this world's goods!" 

"Stuff and nonsense!" scouted Carroll, 
briskly. "People who have money to go 
and buy whatever they fancy, all made, 
don't get half the pleasure that those do 
who have to contrive. It's such fun to 
make something out of nothing!" 

"You're a hopeless optimist!" I laughed. 
"If you had lots of funds, I know you 
would think that that was the best thing on 
earth!" 

"Well, I daresay I should try to look on 
the bright side of it," admitted Carroll, with 
one of her contagious chuckles, "but I can 
be just exactly as happy looking on the 
bright side of this. So what's the differ- 
ence ?" 

[128] 



Branttful UjUtga mao* txtw, for tlf* sttrprfB* 

m tilt Bky-rljU&rwt. 

— Keats 

XXV 

i^vHERE had been a peculiarly atrocious 
^^ murder committed in Detroit that year. 
The criminal had been tried and convicted, 
and was sentenced to be hanged "sometime 
in the week beginning December 13." It 
was during that week that some of us were 
sitting together, one day, in Carroll's little 
box of a parlor, embroidering towels for 
Kate Pearson's trousseau, according to the 
unconventional but helpful custom of our 
little group; and, in a lull in our desultory 
talk, Eunice sighed and said: 

"I wonder if that man Morrison was ex- 
ecuted to-day?" 

"Hope not," responded Kate; "I hope 
[129] 



C56e Great Etoenture 

he's got another day or two to dread it in. 
Nothing could be bad enough for him!" 

"It must be the worst punishment possi- 
ble, though," I ruminated, "to be sentenced 
in that way, with no definite time men- 
tioned; to wake up each morning wonder- 
ing, 'Will it be to-day ?' — to live through 
each waking minute and hour, not knowing 
how many more there will be before one is 
led off to the block and the black cap." 

"I read somewhere," contributed Anna, 
"that in a way we are all sentenced crimi- 
nals, all doomed to death, only not knowing 
the appointed date. And it's so, girls, isn't 
it? We've all got to pay the penalty just 
as surely as this Morrison has, and we and 
he are almost equally in the dark as to the 
exact time — the only difference being that 
he knows it must come this week, and we 
don't know whether for us it will be this 
week or next, or later." 

"I never thought of it that way before," 

[130] 



<5&e Sxtat Eftmenture 

I reflected. "Isn't it a wonder we can be 
so happy and cheerful when we know this 
sentence is hanging over our heads?" 

"I suppose Carroll doesn't feel that way 
at all?" questioned Eunice, looking up wist- 
fully. 

Carroll did not seem inclined to talk. 

"Well, naturally," she said, finally, as we 
all waited for her to answer, "it wouldn't 
make me perfectly miserable to know, each 
morning when I woke up, that I might be 
going that day on a new expedition — to 
have an interesting adventure. It all de- 
pends on the way you look at it. You can 
call it a 'sentence of death,' and be lugu- 
brious, or you can call it the promise of a 
matchless excursion, and be gay." 

"Carroll is cross," said Kate. 

"I don't mean to be," Carroll replied; 
"but it seems to me that people go out of 
their way trying to make that whole sub- 
ject painful. Whoever it was that thought 

[131] 



<3&e Gtteat Bfoaentute 

out the metaphor Anna just quoted, that 
we are 'all sentenced criminals, not knowing 
the date of our execution' — I read it, too — 
must be a morbid neurasthenic, and ought 
to be ashamed of himself for putting one 
more stumbling-block of melancholy sug- 
gestion in his fellow-mortals' way." 

"Bravo!" applauded Kate. "If it's only 
a matter of words, and not facts, he deserves 
your censure." 

"Facts!" exclaimed Anna, impatiently. 
"Even the word is an impertinence in this 
connection. The whole thing is nothing but 
conjecture, and is bound to be so to the end 
of time!" 

"I'll tell you what I wish," said Kate. 
"I wish the idea of Heaven seemed at least 
desirable to me. It doesn't, and I can't 
make it." 

"Well," Eunice advanced, with unusual 
independence, "did you ever happen to 
think how much more beautiful it may be 

[132] 



C56e ©[teat HDtienture 

than we can even guess at? I heard a ser- 
mon not long ago that gave me a new idea. 
The point of it was that we haven't any 
means of comparing this life and the life to 
come; that all our objects for making the 
parallel are probably entirely inadequate. 
The illustration given was of a boy born 
in a mine. When they tried to tell him 
about the world above the air shaft his 
conception of it would have to be formed 
by picturing such images as he was familiar 
with in the only place he knew — the dark 
and gloomy cavern, thousands of feet away 
from light and pure air and sunshine. 
They would tell him that overhead was a 
sky of shining blue, with the glorious sun 
for its light; and he would imagine some- 
thing like the dim shadowy arches of the 
mine, with the smoking yellow mine-lantern 
giving off its murky rays. They would 
tell him of a carpet of green, soft grass, 
and of growing flowers; and he would pic- 

[133] 



G&e Gtreat Eftmenture 

ture the damp, cold floor of the mine, with 
its slippery green slime, and its tufts of fun- 
gus here and there in the ooze. They 
would speak of rivers and brooks and of 
the sea; and the only water he could use for 
comparison would be the dank, poisonous 
pools in the bottom of the mine. So you 
see, no matter how faithfully he tried to 
multiply his dimensions and beautify his 
images, his picture would be a vague replica 
of the world under the surface of the earth ; 
absolutely and entirely different from the 
beautiful glowing world up here that he had 
never seen." 

"That must suit you down to the ground, 
Carroll," I said, as no one else spoke for 
a minute after Eunice finished. 

"Well," Carroll had dropped her work, 
and sat still, thinking; "I like the cheerful- 
ness of it, but it suggests an idea of remote- 
ness that doesn't quite appeal to me. I 
hope he meant it only figuratively; that he 

[134] 






O&e ©(teat Sfotienture 

wasn't thinking of the beauties of any actual 
distant and unknown place, when he spoke 
of that Heaven so unlike this earth. Per- 
sonally, I don't think of the life that simply 
goes on as being so different as that from 
the life we are now living, or of the place it 
goes on in as being so far away. The eyes 
of the spirit may see it as being more beauti- 
ful than it is to us, but I always feel, some- 
way, as if it were likely to be right here. 
Why shouldn't that be the natural thing?" 

"How could it be?" I remonstrated. 
Then I laughed a little. "Spirits would be 
awfully crowded and elbowed if they set- 
tled down amongst so many objects and 
commodities as this earth is full of. I 
should think they'd need more room — that 
they wouldn't want to be jostled!" 

"Frivolous!" said Kate, sotto voce. 

"We don't know much about spirit and 
its laws," persisted Carroll, "but we do 
know something about material bodies; and 

[135] 



©&e Gfceat Btotienture 

among other things we know that many- 
forms of animal life exist here, side by side, 
and go their separate ways and live their 
whole lives, utterly unconscious of each oth- 
er's presence. We are not 'crowded and 
elbowed' by millions of tiny living things 
which we know of only theoretically ; and 
as for them, I don't suppose they ever dream 
that they aren't the only inhabitants of the 
earth and air. Very likely even that big 
little animal, the ant, never thinks of us as 
fellow beings; if we enter its life at all, it 
is as unconquerable forces — as when one of 
our feet crushes out a hundred of them at 
once; and the ant, in turn, is an inconceiv- 
able giant to myriads of smaller creatures 
invisible to our eyes. And so, if unknown 
to each other there exist so many different 
worlds of animal life, all about us, it seems 
the simplest thing possible that still another 
world may be right here, unseen, as we are 
unseen by the creatures of the microscope 
[136] 



C5fie Gtreat Botoenture 

— perhaps sometimes dimly felt. I like 
that idea better than that of a distant 
Heaven; though I'm not afraid of being 
lonesome, wherever it is, for it's sure to be 
interesting!" 



[137] 



Borne jsmtttg aprll 
Qto fttBatpat? Hit sijafaroia. 

— Keats 

XXVI 

j^^HIS was during the first year of their 
^**r marriage. The next, they went 
" 'way out west" to live, in a town in Ne- 
braska. Richard had relatives there, and 
it was one of the traits of his unstable na- 
ture to love change. I always thought, 
too, that he was jealous of Carroll's pleas- 
ure in her friends, and that he wanted to 
get her away from the place she knew and 
loved. If that was so, it showed how little 
he really knew Carroll, for no transplant- 
ing could crush her sense of pleasure in her 
surroundings; that she carried with her and 
it was indestructible. 

We heard little about them. Carroll's 

[138] 



C5&e Gfteat Bntientute 

letters gave almost no information as to the 
outward circumstances of her life. Two 
years after they went away I visited them, 
unasked. I was saddened by the great 
change in Carroll's looks. She was pale and 
thin and almost wan ; but there was a steady 
brightness in her eyes, she was childishly ex- 
cited over my visit, and she gaily brushed 
aside all my anxious inquiries. On Rich- 
ard's appearance, too, I saw with almost 
equal concern, because of his connection 
with my friend, his sins had begun to make 
deep impress. In the clouded eyes, the 
shaking hand, the mottled complexion, I 
saw evidences only too clear of the life he 
had been leading; and still Carroll was si- 
lent, even with me, the friend who loved her 
best. 

Only once during my visit did she give 
any hint of the uphill road she was travel- 
ing, and that was the morning after a dread- 
ful night when he was brought home help- 
[139] 



©fie Gtteat Efotientute 

less, bestial. On that morning she asked 
me to cut my visit short and go at once. 
She made no flimsy excuses; she knew I 
would understand, and I suppose she hoped 
I would hold my peace about it. In this 
she was disappointed. 

"Oh, Carroll!" I cried, "why did it have 
to be this way? Why couldn't life have 
been beautiful for you, as it is for me?" 

"Why, Theodora Starkweather, life is 
beautiful for me ! The little flecks — I don't 
have to hold them between me and the sun 
all the time, do I? And then," she added, 
smiling, "the nicest thing of all I can never 
lose; the consciousness, at the background 
of all my thoughts — especially if I ever get 
a little discouraged or upset by things that 
seem to go wrong — that something nice is 
going to happen further on; that no one 
can keep me from that, anyway! Just as, 
when I was a little girl, if I knew that I 
was to go to a party or a picnic later in the 

[140] 



(5&e Gxtat Eftroenture 

week, I could do all the small, irksome 
'chores,' and run the endless errands, and 
work at the stupid lessons, quite cheerfully, 
because of the pleasant thing in store." 

"And the pleasant thing in this case is 
Heaven ?" 

"Well, not in the sense of something sur- 
veyed, mapped out. No. I think rather 
of the unknown Afterwards, the next 
Event, the Land of Finding Out — the 
Great Adventure that's before us all." 



[141] 



£foti*r Btrtk? sail in a f*ar — 
<&amt ttttn port gtiailg. 

— Emerson 

XXVII 

gFTER that, we heard almost nothing 
from them for six years. Now and 
then there floated to us some rumor about 
Richard, that his weaknesses were growing 
upon him, that he was sinking lower and 
lower in the scale of being, becoming more 
and more the slave of his appetites. Now 
and then came a disturbing report in re- 
gard to Carroll's health; that over- work and 
deprivations and neglect were taking their 
toll of her. Then came news of Richard's 
death; and after that Carroll came back 
to us. 

It is with a strange commingling of 

[142] 



O&e Gtreat Btotoentute 

eagerness and reluctance that I approach 
the account of those last happy months of 
Carroll's life, when, worn out and poor and 
mortally ill, she came back to Detroit to 
be with her own again. The eagerness 
comes from a deep desire to share with oth- 
ers that happy memory ; the reluctance, from 
a fear that I may not be able to portray 
exactly as it was the atmosphere of whole- 
someness and sunshine that pervaded that 
entire time, and makes it look, in the retro- 
spect, like a bright Indian summer. Car- 
roll did not convey the slightest idea of the 
dying heroine; there was, in fact, such an 
unsentimental every-dayness about her, that 
when we speak to each other now of that 
wonderful time, we would explain, if ques- 
tioned, that the wonderfulness lay in the 
naturalness of it all — in our entire free- 
dom from any sense of approaching calam- 
ity, in the absence of gloom, of conventional 
slurrings over, of euphemistic phrases, of 

[143] 



C5&e ©treat Hotienture 

thin disguises. Carroll had come home to 
die, and we knew from the first that the time 
could not be far off. But it was the most 
marvelous time of waiting conceivable, be- 
cause it was from beginning to end so un- 
affectedly pleasant and so full of simple 
good-cheer. 



[144] 



An& not from East* m mmiiotoa oalg . • • • 

— Clouoh 

XXVIII 

^T^E were shocked at first, when we saw 
\!l/ the plain little face so colorless and 
worn, as if the iron gauntlet of cruel cir- 
cumstance had passed over it, erasing all the 
girlish contours and tints. But the eager- 
ness remained; Carroll's eyes, even though 
set in that dimmed, whitened face, were the 
same expectant, interested eyes as of old; 
observing alertly the details of the passing 
panorama of life, searching for its gay and 
cheerful things, finding each new page as 
full of charm and novelty as they had twenty 
years before. 

Almost immediately upon her return she 
took to her room, at Miss Sophia Page's, 
and even to the couch, under the window. 

[145] 



©Be ©fceat BDtientute 

Our tender pity, our aff ectionate solicitude, 
fell back shamefaced and embarrassed be- 
fore her gay courage and commonplace ac- 
ceptance of facts. She found her lack of 
strength amusing but not sad. 

"Isn't it too funny for me to be lying here 
in elegance, like a veritable Camille?" she 
said, by way of breaking the ice, at the first 
visit of "our crowd" ; women, now, of thirty 
and over, with families and cares, and some 
crows' feet and grayness, but "girls" still to 
one another. 

Carroll's room was such a cheerful place 
that it became at once a favorite gathering- 
point for us all. Invalids, especially those 
who are known to be almost through with 
life, are often the objects of tender devo- 
tion, and the recipients of kindly calls and 
loving attentions; but such visits are likely 
to be made from a sense of duty, and in 
the face of an instinctive feeling almost of 
reluctance. To Carroll's room, on the con- 

[146] 



Gfie Gtreat BDtoemure 

trary, we flocked, not from altruism, but 
because it gave us pleasure. We were 
merry there, and yet it was not because of 
dodging the facts of the case. That would 
not have been Carroll's way. 

"Isn't it wonderful," she said to us, in 
her old, underscoring manner, "isn't it won- 
derful to think how soon it's really going to 
happen, and to me ! Girls, can you actually 
believe it?" 

I recalled a time when, long ago, she had 
said that she could "hardly wait"; the 
"hardly wait" look was in her face now. 

"Oh, Carroll," said Kate, "you talk as if 
you were in a hurry to leave us!" 

"I don't mean it that way," answered 
Carroll, with quick compunction. "You 
know I've always said I'd be in a hurry if 
I weren't having such a good time here that 
I didn't want to miss any of it. But now 
it seems, by the way Dr. Brown shakes his 
head and looks at Aunt Sophy and won't an- 
[147] 



O&e Gfceat Sfotienture 

swer my questions — funny old thing! — as 
if I'd had about all of it that is allotted to 
me; and I'm just enough of a little girl yet 
to be curious and eager about the 'what 
next?' When it's decided that you're really 
going somewhere, you know, and you are 
all packed and waiting on the station plat- 
form for your train, it's natural, isn't it, to 
be looking up the track to be getting the 
first glimpse of the locomotive? But of 
course," she added, smiling, "you're just as 
interested in the friends who have come to 
the train with you, as ever you were; and 
you love them more than ever, if anything!" 



[148] 



$0ttt $nab \s man's l\U t tift mtrt linUto.— Browning 

XXIX 

ONE day when I was with her alone, 
someone downstairs — it was Mary 
Royce, who used her great musical gift gen- 
erously for her friends' pleasure — began to 
sing that little song of Riley's — "There, lit- 
tle girl, don't cry" — that is a favorite with 
most people, and the words came up to us 
distinctly, as we listened, in the room above. 
I considerately refrained from looking 
Carroll's way, while the song was in prog- 
ress, it seemed to fit her so perfectly — the 
broken doll, and the promise of the better 
things of youth; the broken slate, and the 
hope held out of compensating life and love 
to come; and for fulfillment of all hopes 
and promises — what? 

[149] 



05&e ©treat Efotoenture 

There, little girl, don't cry ! They have broken your 
heart, I know, 

And the rainbow gleams of your youthful dreams, 

Are things of the long ago. 
But Heav'n holds all for which you sigh. 
There, little girl, don't cry! 

I glanced shyly, almost apprehensively 
towards her, when the last notes had been 
sung. To my surprise, instead of being 
immersed in the gentle melancholy that I 
felt sure the tender little song must have 
evoked, I found a frown on her forehead, 
and a very unspiritual expression on her 
face. 

"What an absurd song!" she said, impa- 
tiently. "Why on earth do people choose 
to sing such gloomy, depressing things, let 
alone write them?" 

"Why," I exclaimed, aghast, "it isn't 
meant that way, Carroll!" 

"Well, it's sung that way, anyway," she 
insisted, "with the most dribbling sentimen- 
tality in voice and inflection. I'll bet there 

[150] 



C)&e Gtreat Bttoenture 

are tears in Mary's eyes now, while she is 
closing the piano!" 

"But it tries to be hopeful, religious," I 
argued, idiotically. ' 'Heaven holds all for 
which you sigh'; that's what you say, Car- 
roll." 

"No, I don't," Carroll said, stubbornly. 
"I don't say Heaven holds all; I say earth 
holds loads of good things, and Heaven 
only keeps on. And it isn't 'religious' to be 
dissatisfied with the things we have right 
now; it's unappreciative and ungrateful. 
If I were as disappointed in all the experi- 
ences of earth as that song indicates, I'd 
have little hope of attaining happiness in the 
Keeping-On Land. The analogy in it is 
awful. The little girl is broken-hearted— 
but youth is going to make up; youth dis- 
appoints her — but love will make up; love 
proves a fiasco — but Heaven will make up. 
You see what Heaven is going to do, to be 
logical!" 

[151] 



G&e Gtreat Bouentute 

"Well, it's so, of the earth part, any- 
way," I insisted. 

Carroll laughed. "You're a goose, Theo- 
dora. I don't think it is so, even of the 
earth part. Of course the doll gets broken; 
why shouldn't it? Childhood tires of dolls 
and throws them away for more grown-up 
things to play with. The child in this song 
is like a chicken sighing because it has left 
the shell!" 

Of course I had been talking merely for 
the sake of talking. Now, however, when 
I became really serious, and expressed the 
platitudinous "lesson" in words, I said, it 
seemed, the very worst thing of all. 

"You know as well as I do, Carroll, that 
the meaning of the little poem is absolutely 
incontestable: that the things of earth are 
not really satisfying ; that we must wait for 
another life for unalloyed enjoyment and 
happiness." 

"Oh, bosh!" she exclaimed, with more ir- 

[152] 



C5&e Gtteat Efotoenture 

ritation than she often showed; "if we can't 
enjoy the lovely things of now, how can we 
hope to enjoy the things of then? One has 
got to get fun as one goes along, and we're 
just as surely going along now as we shall 
be going along then. That's a silly song!" 



[15$] 




Me ttti lijat mt are greater ttjatt tn* know. 
— Wordsworth 

XXX 

[OMETIMES one human being may 
suppose, for a score of years, that he 
knows another well, and then only by chance 
find out that he has been living all that time 
in complete ignorance of that other's real 
interests and vital problems. I never 
guessed that Anna Everett's fear of death 
as the end of all things had been the under- 
lying horror and dread of her whole life, 
until it came out one morning in Carroll's 
room, when we had all been talking and 
laughing for an hour like foolish school- 
girls. Then, suddenly, little Ellen White 
sobered down and exclaimed, 

"Oh, Carroll, you must get well! I can't 
give you up and feel that you are really 
going to leave us! You seem the most 

[154] 



<5&e Great Sfotoemute 

alive person I ever knew ; I can't even think 
of you as being any other way." 

"You don't have to, and won't have to, 
Ellen dear," Carroll replied, deeply touched, 
as she always was, at the exhibition of any 
personal feeling towards herself. 

"Do you mean you think you can get 
well, even yet?" asked Ellen, eagerly. 

Carroll made a wry little face and shook 
her head. 

"Not the way you mean. This body, I 
guess, is too ragged and faded and worn 
thin in spots, for me to be able to do much 
more with it. But look here, Ellen," she 
said, holding out her hand, "if this hand 
were to be cut off, here at the wrist, and 
carried out of the room, would you follow 
it sadly, thinking it was any part of me?" 

"Of course not," answered little Ellen. 

"Well, if it were taken off at the elbow, 
would you? or at the shoulder? No? I — 
the I that you think of as being alive, as 

[155] 



Cfte ©treat HDtienture 

you say^ — am something quite distinct from 
hand or arm or foot or any other part of 
this anatomy, am I not? So why are you 
so over-anxious about this old body's get- 
ting well? Though I don't want to speak 
of it disrespectfully; it has done me many 
a good turn, first and last." 

Little Ellen pondered, gazing at her 
friend. 

"The real You," she said; "it's the ques- 
tion of the ages. When I say or think You, 
I have the image of this form of yours, and 
your face and eyes and smile; as you say, 
each one or all might be eliminated, and 
You would not be touched; and yet, how 
we love the visible presence of those we 
care for!" 

"I often wish our eyes were provided 
with more powerful lenses," said Carroll; 
"think how inferior their scope is even to 
that of the camera! If they were a million 
times stronger than that, very likely the 

[156] 



C56e ©treat Bfotientute 

real You could see the real Me. I wonder 
what it would be like?" 

"Nothing I'd like to look at half so much 
as I do this that I see right now; I know 
that!" Ellen replied, doggedly. 

"Pooh!" scoffed Carroll, "I suppose that's 
what a caterpillar may say to a caterpillar 
friend, but I'll bet when he sees him later 
as a golden-winged butterfly they both have 
a laugh over his former absurdity." 

"Carroll, leave off romancing," Anna 
broke in, out of a brown study, "and talk 
to me about something that has always 
troubled me. I've never been afraid of the 
place of torment and eternal punishment 
that my creed dwells upon; I feel sure such 
things can't be, if there's a good God. 
But it seems to me all analogy points to an 
end, at the end of life; to our little breath 
of individuality and consciousness going out 
altogether, like the life of a plant or an 
animal." 

[157] 



©fie Gtteat Boaenture 

"Like the life of a plant or an animal," 
Carroll repeated slowly, to herself. 

"Why, yes; they die — and that's the end 
of them. You admit that, don't you?" 

"I don't know," she answered, still 
thoughtful. "How can we tell?" 

"Oh, well, that's foolish!" Anna cried, 
impatiently. "Why should we think, then, 
that we alone keep on, when everything else 
lives its little span, and then perishes? 
There's a terribly weak spot in what you've 
just been saying to Ellen; and at that spot 
lies much of my doubt and fear about the 
continuance of life. The hand may be re- 
moved, the foot, large portions of the body, 
as you say, without affecting the identity; 
but how about the brain? Each tiniest 
thought is represented by a corresponding 
change in the brain matter; without the ac- 
tion of the brain, where would be that T 
you were speaking of? Injure the tissues 
of the brain in a certain way — and though 

[158] 



C5&e Gtteat Htoenture 

life may keep on, one's individual conscious- 
ness is lost. What is the T but the mind, 
and what is the mind but brain-process? 
And brain is as material as the dust, and it 
will return to dust!" 

"Then I am my brain?" asked Carroll, 
interestedly. 

"Well, if thought has its origin in cellu- 
lar changes in the brain? And if its origin 
is a cell, its life ends with the cell's life, 
doesn't it?" 

"I don't believe anyone alive knows which 
comes first, the brain-process or the 
thought," said Carroll, taking the bit in her 
teeth. "They must be so nearly simultane- 
ous that very likely it can't be proven, either 
way — which is the cause, and which the ef- 
fect." 

"But if it is proven — if it should be — " 
urged Anna, with a lingering hope in her 
friend's ability to "see through" things. 

"I— I— I—" Carroll repeated softly to 

[159] 



G&e Gtteat HDtoenture 

herself, as if she were trying, by audible ex- 
pression, to straighten things out and 
properly to locate this mysterious and elu- 
sive personality. 

Then her face cleared and she looked up 
smiling. 

"Well, Anna," she said, "I don't see such 
an immense stumbling-block there. T am 
not my hand, but I use my hand ; I couldn't 
hold this material book without it. T am 
not my heart, but I use my heart ; I couldn't 
pump the blood through this physical body 
without it. I use my lungs; I couldn't 
aerate and purify this blood without them. 
And so, in the same way, it seems to me, 
T am not my brain, but I use my brain; 
probably I couldn't get thoughts to this 
physical consciousness without it. But I 
believe it does the machine part of the 
thought merely; that 'I' am the owner of 
the brain, and the author of the thought; 
that, though the brain and the other bodily 
[160] 



C&e ©treat Bfotientute 

organs seem essential to my perfect adjust- 
ment to this physical world, yet above and 
behind all these organs and processes sits 
the T enthroned, — imperishable, undying! 
Most likely not scientific, O Anna of little 
faith, but satisfactory to me!" 
"But— if the brain is injured — " 
"Machine out of order," interrupted Car- 
roll. "Here, I'll tell you what it's like. 
It's like a telegrapher's outfit in a pioneer 
country far from supplies. The instru- 
ment and the wires are indispensable in get- 
ting a message to the outside world. The 
wires, however, can be injured, and even 
broken, without necessarily cutting off the 
usefulness of the apparatus; for they can 
sometimes be mended or replaced, or the re- 
ceiver may make connection at a nearer 
point. But injure the sending instrument 
itself, and no correct messages will go un- 
less it can be repaired, which often is im- 
possible, owing to the lack of facilities in 
[161] 



CD&e Gtreat BDtientute 

that crude country. The operator may try 
to tap out the words and sentences he wishes 
to send, but the machine is out of order — 
they won't go at all, or they'll go all mixed 
and garbled. Do one thing more: remove 
the electricity, and not even a garbled mes- 
sage can be sent. The apparatus is of no 
further use. But what argument is there 
in that, that there are not hundreds of mes- 
sages lying ready to be sent, or that the 
operator himself is not as hale and hearty 
as ever ? He may have to wait until he can 
deliver those messages in person — that is 
all. 

"Just suppose, of two operators who have 
never seen each other, one grows to love 
the messages and the thoughts that are 
tapped out to him by the other, becomes 
quite bound up in the sense of companion- 
ship they have over the wires. Then some- 
thing happens; dots and dashes that come 
to him are all blurry and illegible, and finally 
[162] 



(56e ©treat Sfofcenture 

cease. He can't get the other instrument 
to answer. He wrings his hands. He 
says, 'My friend is broken and spoiled and 
destroyed! I shall never hear from him 
again!' Foolish! Oughtn't he to know 
that, as he himself is not identical with his 
instrument, but is its master, the person who 
'uses' it — so his friend also is not a helpless 
mechanism, but is the living operator on it? 
And instead of deducing from the fact that 
the instrument has ceased to respond to 
him that his friend has perished, ought he 
not rather to surmise the truth — that that 
friend has been released from the necessity 
of expressing himself by means of steel, 
and copper wire, and may soon now com- 
municate with him face to face; as soon as 
he himself, in turn, is released from service 
at his own post of duty, for freer and 
larger self-expression?" 



[168] 



3 htttU mg aattl a InrhlQ plramir* IfirttH*.— Tennysoh 

XXXI 

ONCE, in those last days, I remember 
saying to her, after some trifling mis- 
hap to certain plans I had made, 

"Oh, well, that is always the way! One 
ought to learn 'never to expect anything, 
and one will never be disappointed.' " 

"I never agreed with that," she replied. 
"My motto is, 'Expect everything of every- 
thing, and you won't be disappointed!' 
Because something is always bound to come 
true, you see!" 

"Oh, Carroll!" I cried, in a sudden gust 
of passionate pity for her, who cherished 
so loyally and wore so gallantly the rags 
and tatters of life that had been her por- 

[164] 



<3&e Glteat Boaentute 

tion, "can you say that, sincerely? Have 
you always been so happy?" 

She looked at me thoughtfully, chin 
propped in hand, in the old way. 

"I know what you mean, Theodora," she 
said, "and perhaps it is just as well not to 
ignore it, this once. 'Happy' is a badly 
used little word," she went on, after a 
pause. "When one speaks of a happy life, 
one almost invariably means a life sur- 
rounded by outwardly harmonious circum- 
stances. Looked at in that way, possibly, 
my life wouldn't be reckoned a particularly 
happy one. But can you truly say it has 
not been so? To me, to be interested is to 
be happy; and I've always been interested, 
always looking forward to something. I've 
never got over thinking life is wonderful. 
I almost believe I've been the very happiest, 
really, of all our crowd." 

"You have been so because you have 
taken things that way," I retorted. "If 

[165] 



©6e Gfeeat ElDtietmire 

beautiful realities had been given you, 
don't you think they, with your contented 
spirit, would have made you doubly blest?" 

"Contentment! That reminds me of a 
browsy little lamb, nibbling in a pasture! 
My kind of happiness seems to me a very 
different thing from that; it means looking 
over all the fences and between all the 
bars, and being immensely interested in 
every surrounding meadow and distant 
mountain and flying bird. It's positive en- 
joyment, not negative passivity. Of 
course, Theodora, I don't know what 'might 
have been' ; I only know this — that so far as 
my observation goes, we'd be just about as 
happy as we are, no matter how differently 
we'd been placed!" 

"I'll grant that riches and poverty are not 
the gauges of satisfaction," I conceded. 
"But — forgive me, Carroll — but don't you 
think everyone is agreed that an ideal mar- 
riage is essential to a woman's inmost sense 
[166] 



C56e Gtreat Bfotienture 

of fulfillment? That there is all the differ- 
ence in the world between having that one 
perfect, congenial companionship — and be- 
ing without it?" 

"I should think," said Carroll, with her 
infectious laugh, yet thoughtfully, too, "it 
might be easier to be happy, with such a 
big stepping-stone to it. But I doubt if 
the quality of the happiness, once attained, 
is not just as livably satisfactory in one case 
as another. Why, Theodora — I don't us- 
ually like to be personal — but look at Kate 
Pearson, with her nice husband and her 
beautiful home and those darling children; 
wouldn't anyone say she must be flawlessly 
happy? And yet I truly don't believe she 
ever knows a really satisfied hour. She is 
annoyed because Jack has to be away so 
much, worried to distraction about the chil- 
dren's small ailments, uneasy even when she 
looks in the glass for fear she'll see a line 
or a gray hair!" 

[167] 



O&e Glreat Botoentttre 

"But those are such little things! Un- 
derneath she has the solid foundation of joy 
itself." 

"That's just the point. She has the 
thing you say is the foundation, but — is she 
happy? What is happiness? Having a 
reason for it, or being so? Wouldn't you 
rather, if the choice were given you, feel 
light-hearted all the time, as I do, than al- 
ways be distressed and harassed and nerv- 
ous, even if there were ten thousand 'solid 
foundations' underneath?" 



[168] 



3 wmxlb Irate tljat btutif btmbuQtb utg egrii 

Attb baite m* rmp past! 

•-Browning 

XXXII 

eRADUALLY and quite uncon- 
sciously, we grew more and more into 
Carroll's way of looking upon the time that 
for her was now coming with swift feet, 
and, later on, for us all. So that when one 
day the minister, old Mr. Beebe, told her 
that he thought her bright way of talking 
about her death was sacrilegious, there was 
not one of us who did not smile a little, and 
feel that we understood her better than he. 
Her "queerness," in fact, was beginning to 
permeate our own attitude. 

But those who did not know her so well 
were still shocked by her gaiety and light- 
headedness. I remember Helen Dean's 
[169] 



O&e ©treat Btotienture 

bewilderment when she came in one day, 
towards the last, and found Carroll propped 
up against her pillows — she could no longer 
get to the couch by the window — her cheeks 
flushed, and her hands hot with the fever 
that was consuming her, looking with eager, 
absorbed attention at dozens of bright sam- 
ples of silk, from which one of the girls 
was trying to select a gown. 

"Oh, my dear Mrs. Kennedy, how sweet 
of you to try to show an interest in these 
trivial things when you are so ill!" cried 
Mrs. Dean, glancing towards the rest of us 
with meaning disapproval. 

"Sweet of me? Not a bit!" was the char- 
acteristic answer, given with all the old em- 
phasis. "I think it's fun to be right in the 
midst of things, up to the very last J" 



[170] 



Na Hadttm* nf Unwell . . . 
— Tennyson 

XXXIII 

ONE afternoon several of us walked up 
to the house together. We were very 
silent and looked apprehensively at the door 
as we approached, fearing, as we had feared 
each day for a week, that the nameless 
thing had happened. Miss Page met us in 
the hall. 

"Don't stay long, girls," she said, in a 
low tone. "She must not talk very much. 
The doctor thinks she cannot last through 
the night." 

We went upstairs with a strange feeling, 
strange because it was not terrified, nor 
even wholly sad. We knew we should find 
her smiling, as usual, and that there would 
be no solemn hush, no mournful recognition 
of a tragic end. 

[171] 



"Oh, girls!" she called out, before we 
fairly entered, "have you heard? Has Aunt 
Sophy told you?" 

"Yes, Carroll, dear," I answered for us 
all; and then added, because I could not 
help it, "and you are not a bit sorry — nor 
afraid — even now?" 

She smiled at me, a gay twinkling smile. 

"You know better than to ask that, Theo- 
dora! But I'll tell you the way I do feel. 
I feel awfully, tremendously excited! I 
never dreamed I should be so stirred up 
about it; but it does seem so incredible, and 
so splendid, that I am actually just about 
to start, at last, on the Great Adventure!" 

"If you could only be here, yourself, to 
cheer us up after you go !" cried Eunice, in 
sudden realization of our coming need. 
"There's no one else can comfort us about 
it, as you could!" 

"What a dear, funny thing to think of!" 
Carroll said, brightly. "I certainly am 
[172] 



<3&e ©treat Hotienture 

glad you girls think you will miss me; it's 
lovely to be missed. But please don't do 
it with lowered voices and averted eyes ; and 
don't do it in the past tense when it isn't 
absolutely necessary; 'Carroll was' sounds 
so — so dead and gone!" 

We talked a little more, then, heeding 
Miss Page's sign that we had stayed long 
enough, we rose to go. It was hard; yet 
in spite of our sadness she had communi- 
cated to us something of her own feeling of 
elation and expectation. 

Then, as we stopped to say good-bye, she 
said, looking up at us with shining eyes that 
I shall never forget: 

"You know, girls, that I shall be gone 
away before you come to the house again. 
This is the last time I shall see your faces, 
and this is the last time you'll see mine, for 
awhile. And you know I am going to 
throw something away — something that is 
worn out, and that I've no more use for — 
[173] * 



<3&e Gtreat Efttoenture 

and it is beautiful, the way things are go- 
ing to be; for Aunt Sophy has promised, 
like the precious old darling she is — haven't 
you, dear? — to do things just as I want 
them. Do you remember what I decided 
about this, years ago? Well, you just see 
if you don't like it! You'll come to see 
Aunt Sophy to-morrow, won't you? And 
please think of me, and please talk of me, 
as having just gone around the corner to 
find my Great Adventure!" 



[174] 



.... With morning farrfl ana mitt; morning 
Ijearta . . 

— R. L. Stevenson 

XXXIV 

©ECAUSE she had requested it, we 
went together to the house the next 
day. No crepe was on the door; the cur- 
tains were drawn back, as usual. Miss 
Page met us, with a still, white light on her 
face. 

"Come up to her room," she said. "She 
wanted you to come up there to-day." 

The doors into the parlor were open; we 
saw no dreadful thing within. We went up 
the long staircase, and into the bright place 
where we had seen her last — and wondered. 
The room was full of Carroll's presence; a 
pleasant, sunny room, with the muslin cur- 
tains fluttering softly in the spring breeze. 

"Oh, Miss Sophy," I cried, "where is 
she?" 

[175] 



C5&e Gtreat Btotoemute 

"She isn't here," she replied, "and neither 
is that which she called the 'cast-off gar- 
ment' which she left behind. She said you 
would all understand." 

We asked her to tell us what she could, 
and she seemed glad to talk about it. 

"She herself went last night, at about 
eight o'clock," she began. "She had told 
me exactly what she wanted done after- 
wards, so we kissed each other at the last, 
and then she left, for her 'journey.' It al- 
most seems to me now as if the carriage or 
something came for her then; I can't think 
of it in the ordinary way. And very soon 
I left the room, as she'd made me promise 
to do. — The rest was done quietly, with- 
out my presence or help, in the night, and 
that which she had left behind was taken 
away. This morning when I came down 
here I found the room as it is now. — It 
was a strange way to do; I only did it to 
please her; but someway it does make it 
[176] 



C56e Gtreat HDtoenture 

seem as if she had just gone off on a trip. 
I remember her, and I suppose I always 
shall, lying here and smiling, and talking 
about it exactly as if her trunk were all 
packed and she were just waiting for the 
time to start. — And this morning she is 
gone." 

So Miss Sophia Page talked on, in a 
strange, subdued excitement; it all did not 
seem like death. I looked at her and 
thought of her attitude, many years before, 
when her brother, Carroll's father, had died. 

"Then there will be no funeral?" asked 
one of "the girls," hardly able to take it in. 

"No funeral," replied Aunt Sophy. "She 
said I must think of her just as Mrs. Royce 
did of Mary when she went to Europe to 
study music. And she laughed — you know 
that laugh of hers, girls — and said, wouldn't 
Mary have been provoked if they'd had a 
funeral over her after she'd sailed away! 
'Why, that would make it seem as though 
[177] 



O&e Gtreat Botoemure 

I were dead, Aunt Sophy!' she said. Oh, 
girls, do you believe she knew, and was 
right?" 

"I know, at least," said Kate, "that she 
has made death seem a different thing to 
me. I don't believe I shall ever feel about 
it in the old way again. She was so sure." 

"She is so sure!" I corrected softly. 



[178] 



s 



in Hi* gUam of ilj* Hfjtmng rainbow .... 

— E. A. PlTTINGER 

XXXV 

ES, her wish was carried out. There 
was no dark pall over the house for 
two days thereafter ; no sadness and gloom ; 
no service, in darkened parlors, amidst a 
hushed gathering of suffering friends 
around a long dark object — with hopeful 
words spoken, glorious promises read — and 
broken-hearted, unbelieving tears falling 
fast; no hymns of poignant sweetness to 
stir the depths of emotion; no dreadful 
drive, slowly, mournfully, to the city of the 
dead, beyond the confines of the living city; 
no despairing ceremony and tragic last 
rites, before an open grave — "dust to dust, 
ashes to ashes" — words to pierce the very 
heart of hearts. 

[179] 



O&e 6(reat BDtienture 

As Carroll had said, our final parting 
with her came that afternoon in the sun- 
set glow; her leave-taking of the aunt who 
had been to her like a mother, when the 
last tender kiss was given and returned by 
living lips; and after that — we missed her; 
I have missed her ever since ! But no dark 
and pagan ceremonies stand out in my mem- 
ory between me and the living Carroll. In 
my mind the thought of her is connected 
with no grave. It is easy, it is necessary, 
to think of her as simply having left us, 
that day, to encounter new interests, new 
phases of life and experience. For no 
doubts or fears of my own can permanently 
stand their ground against the picture of 
her happiness at the approach, at last, of 
her "Great Adventure," and of her going 
forward to meet it, so joyous, so eager, and 
so unafraid. 

THE END 

[180] 

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